DollsArtCats

     I have been spraying heads and hands in this little box, over a lining of parchment paper, and it made this thin layer of plastic over the  parchment paper. Apparently nothing sticks to parchment paper. :D     Also in the Department of Surprising things, I had read that bees have learned to bite through the sides of trumpet-style flowers, having grown tired of the floral bullshit of having to back down and up a narrow tube to get nectar. I hadn't seen this behavior before in my own bumblebees--until this year, when sure enough I found the Mandevilla flowers with big old bee bites in them: These holes let the bees get at the nectar without the climbing. So you have to wonder, how do the bees figure this out? Did they read it  in the bee paper? On the bee Internet? On the bee radio? Through the grapevine? :D

We now have a lot of morning glories, and the bumblebees like them--but the flowers are narrow and the bumblebees are fat, so it's a squish for them to get inside the flowers: "oof" almost there... Coming back out isn't easy either: That bee looks like me backing out from cleaning under the kitchen table. We do have a couple of easier flowers for them--here's a bee zooming in to check out the rugosa rose: This is a lot easier than a morning glory: They are so cute--I had my camera only a few inches away for the "in focus" shots and the bees don't seem to mind at all.

We have bumble bees in the backyard--not as many as previous years, but still some, and lots of honeybees from my neighbor's hives. This lady is covered with pollen: They don't seem to mind me weeding around them--I can reach my hand right past them and they don't even lift up and fly around, except to get to the next flower. I've been trying to plant more things to feed them, but their favorite item is the catmint, which luckily for both of us grows like a weed and blooms all summer. And speaking of blooms, the hosta has decided to bloom for a second time this year: Hummingbirds come by to check these out, and I would love to plant a hardy mandevilla or something to keep them visiting more often. I don't really like the feeders--I always feel like that is "junk food" for the hummingbirds and it keeps them from getting more nutritious food from the flowers. A visitor I'd like less of is raccoons. They tore a hole in my potting soil bag, and then t...