#theyll have to pry it from my cold dead fingers

[nabaath-areng]

Being brought up on a farm and only ever going back indoors to head right back out again for my whole life, the decreasing amount of insects has been extremely noticeable and it's been going on for years. Of course it's been worrying with the climate catastrophe, and once I became a beekeeper and learned more about my village's local flora it became even more glaring.

So imagine my surprise this year when there are more insects than I can count. Sitting on my porch (practically my room during summers) I'm noticing species I haven't seen since I was at least a young teenager, and there are more butterflies of different varieties than I even remember from my childhood!

There are so many bees flying around too, probably from the hives down by the old homestead buildings by the church and school, owned by the woman I know from the local beekeeper's association.

What's more is that this year there has been no drought OR flooding, so there are a lot more flowers blooming for longer, and everyone in my village as well as the surrounding villages are reporting a burst of activity in their hives... as well as higher activity from the wild bees and pollinators. For the first time in years it's starting to resemble the way it was when I was younger.

All that is to say, the climate catastrophe is real, and in my area it's causing a lot more violent thunderstorms... but oh my god all this reminds me why I persist despite the despair that tries to dig its claws in.

I may not be able to do major change on a global scale, but you can bet me and everyone here will at least try and support this little place. We can keep going in the fight against the municipality that wants to urbanize at the cost of our precious biodiversity, and we can continue to fight to keep out the cities that tries to enroach on us and get closer.

It is rare for villages in Götaland to remain this free from urbanization despite being nestled right in the middle of multiple major cities, and there's no excuse to destroy what little there is left of it down here in the south.