By seven the front garden smells faintly of wet moss and something like grape sweets. The heathers have opened a morning workshop of lilac. Bumblebees dip one paw at a time. The keeper issues tiny moss aprons and asks that leftover color be dried only on the neighboring stone.
We asked at the kiosk. "I thought someone had spilled jam on the air," said the woman who sells paper bags of seeds. "Then a bumblebee held up a paw, the keeper tied on a moss apron, and the extra purple sat down on the stone as if it had been offered a chair."
The keeper kept a pencil note in the complaint-and-thanks book: if the apron is still being tied, please do not hurry the dip. The next morning a neighbor came back with the same scarf and waited through the paw, the apron, and the one quiet drying. She said the stone looked like a painter's saucer left in the sun, though the brushes were still bees.