Flora and the Bumblebee

My family participates in a citizen-science survey, the Missouri Bumblebee Atlas run by the Xerces Society, across the Mississippi River at the Cape Girardeau Conservation Center. That's our patch. Every few months during the flowering seasons, we spend a day counting bumblebees—cold-stunning them, photo'ing them to record their species, and warming them on our hands so that they rouse and set back off again to forage in the sun. You also record all the native plants you find them on.

My sister Meredith, who lives in Saint Louis, was the instigator of our taking part in this survey. She and her husband Rob have taken over his family's Italian fine-dining restaurant, Frank Papa's ~ when I made this image of the Roman goddess Flora, I asked Meredith what her favorite plants and flowers are from where we do the survey—native species of Missouri—and what her favorite bumblebee is, which is the American Bumblebee. They're all represented here, in an ecology of cosmic participation!