Squash Blossoms

Meanwhile, Mystery Squash #1 continues to take over its corner of the known world. It’s clambering over those daylilies on the right and powering up the slope toward Mystery Squash #2. There’s at least half a dozen more Mystery Squashes scattered out back. And they’re flowering.

Weedercon

I love Readercon, but it’s still too many people, too many ideas, too much information in too little space. No wonder it doesn’t take long for me to go into buffer overflow. What? A writer who needs a little alone time? Never heard of such a thing. This year it was even hotter than usual […]

Virginia Creeper

Virginia creeper is one of those plants you have to keep an eye on and hack back when it goes too far. It grows so robustly because it’s a native plant, and also because it’s a native, the bees love it so much that you can hear the vines buzzing.

Competing for Greens

Today, I figured I would harvest some collard greens before the plants get too humongous, and some critters decided they doesn’t want to wait for them to cook. So impatient. A batch of greens is worth the wait, holes and all. And no, there was no additional protein on the leaves. Whatever they were, they […]

Still some honeybees here

It’s pretty sad that I can get excited about seeing more than one honeybee at a time, but there we are. No clue where their hive is. They seem to like climbing way deep into flowers, so lately I have lots of pictures of bee butts. Right now, the most popular flower is the tall […]

So It’s July

I like to have at least as much fun as a honeybee with her head buried in a flower. So you can expect this month to be even more disorganized and distracted by the garden. You can definitely expect more pictures. More bees. More syrphid flies. More weeds. Maybe even some flowers.

Buzzapaloosa

I finally found the bees! In fact, it’s been Buzzapaloosa around here. The honeybees have been hiding in the bladder campion. Nice to see I was remembering correctly that it’s a popular flower with them. The bumblebees are a lot easier to spot, naturally.

Re: Sweetness and Light

There’s so many books about bees, and especially honeybees, you might think people are trying write a book for every bee in a hive. One expression of our fascination is Sweetness and Light, by Hattie Ellis, an overview of the history of human relations with honeybees, focusing on some real characters who spent their lives […]