Tuesday, March 13, 2012

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The winds were powerful here yesterday. Blew some fence boards out of the panels, broke some of the branches on the wild and crazy tree ..luckily that was all the damage we received.

Got out my cordless drill and mended the fence. We’ll be getting newer panels sometime in the near future.

Saw seagulls flying sideways and the crows were sailing, enjoying the winds. The backyard hummingbird feeder was again knocked to the ground and oh, no. out of sugar. So I braved the winds and off to the supermarket to get some of the sweet stuff. Home, mixed up a batch, put in the freezer to cool down and soon had the cleaned, refilled feeder back in its usual place.

Put more sunflower/birdseed mix in some of the feeders. Especially love the translucent feeder on our kitchen window. Sometimes there are lineups as the birds wait their turn to fetch some sunflower seeds.

Recently I’ve been volunteering in various plant related things. One is happening this week, with removing invasive ground cover at a little neighbourhood street. Another is to have our yard checked during the coming months, to see which pollinators are visiting … I’m just waiting to see if our yard fits the criteria.

In the meantime, I sent some bee photos to the person in charge of this study. I had photographed two bees a few weeks ago. It had been a warm and sunny afternoon and I happened to see several bees hanging on to the side fence, catching the full warmth of the sun’s rays.

Thought that these were queens that had just emerged and were acclimatizing to their new life stage. Well, it turns out that I was half right!

The larger insect was indeed a Queen! A Bombus mixtus (no common name). Only Queens are out this early (it was Feb 22) in the spring, when it is warm and start looking for pollen and nectar and build a nest. The smaller one was a hoverfly .. it is an excellent honeybee mimic.

I also learned that: ” flies have just two wings, and bees four; and flies have big “bug eyes” whereas bees tend to have smaller eyes (and cuter faces). In the hoverfly photo you can see the big bulgy eyes! Bees also tend to have longer antennae than flies, (again easier to see when you have one in front of you :)”

New worlds of knowledge .. the exciting journey continues!!

I can only marvel at the wonderful timing in life that allowed me to happen to pass by the fence on that sunny day, seeing the new Queen, having my camera with me to take a photo. And later, getting more involved with native plant information, being able to send these photos to an expert for identification. The serendipity of gardening. Or the magic of it, really.

Yesterday, while starting on my decluttering, I found things I had bought to play around with one day. One of these was a “learn to play the recorder” kit. So, I opened the packaging, assembled the recorder and studiously went through the instructions. Went from “what the heck” stage, trying to understand the finger placement … to the stage of practising the notes. Fun.

Then, putting my knitting supplies together, I finally started weaving the t-shirt knitting material (found on Stumblupon, ways to re-use t-shirts, fun!) and wove two rows, then, couldn’t find the hook to remove the first row over the second. I know for a fact that this hook is on my table in the gardening room. However, I also knew that if I went to look for it, I would get involved in laundry, and all sorts of distractions, so I just put this loom away in the box for now.

Then I placed a large stack of books recently read .. into a bag for giveaways. Sorted my Spanish and French grammar books onto shelves higher up so that I would open them more often. Couldn’t resist opening up one of each, though, to practise my comprehension and pronunciation.

Also leafed through my “Vein of Gold” book, by Julia Cameron, which fell open at page 177, discussing music and the Native American flute music … would that in any way be coincidental with my practising the recorder? nah.

Next, I repaired a broken wing on one of my graceful faerie ladies .. I had knocked it over months ago, and she just didn’t look right with the one wing .. so now that is all better. I looked through my “the ultimate Fairies handbook) Susannah Marriott. I love the drawings, so fanciful .. and read a few pages. And of course “The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady” .. imagine having the time to just draw and write. Hey .. I have that time.

Well, I made a lot of progress yesterday.

And it’s time to get going on more right now!

🙂