rose and bee W.I.P.

This is a work in progress of a rugosa rose (see the one I picked from my garden in the glass bowl) with a bee in the center. Photo credit for the bee goes to my pal Alison from the Ontario Bee Keepers tec team. The rose is painted with Golden Acrylics (love 'em) on archival tissue, not the easiest support to work on, but it gives me the look I want. The tissue is taped to glass, laid over white paper.
The rugosa's flowers are a favourite of the bees, butterflies and humming birds in my garden, and the hips are consumed by the birds in the winter, I've even seen the chipmunks, running off with hips from the lowest branches.
The hips are very high in Vitamin 'C' and make a tart jam. (recipe)
The finished piece will include a snippet from my Mom's girl hood journal about growing up in war time Britain and collecting rose hips to be dried for the 'war effort'. Sadly when I went to pick hips for the next part of the painting, I noticed that only about 1 in 4 roses had been fertilized. More motivation to keep the message in front of people. Our most immediate environmental threat isn't rising sea levels, or changing weather patterns, or even swine flue, it's the loss of the pollinators. Create habitat, grow pollen and nectar rich flowering plants, don't use pesticides, grow white clover in your lawn, and DON'T swat, and do it all now.