Can you tell I got a new iPhone app?
Tweet
|
|||||
|
Tweet
I’m mostly pulling weeds today since the ground is soft from all the rain, and it’s actually… well, don’t want to jinx it, but… s-u-n-n-y today. Yeah. I know. Shhh. This wasn’t a planned stop, so I didn’t bring the good camera. The best I can do is a little iPhone iPhotoJournalism, to wit: Rian: 1, Leafminers: 0. The bees are wasting no time getting some stuff done. That reminds me… I should probably start another lettuce patch. The chickens seem to be enjoying their new expanded shady digs, thanks to the espaliered apples and plum. As much as chickens “enjoy” anything besides bickering with each other. This is a Black Diamond thornless blackberry that I put in a couple of years ago in full bloom, much to the delight of a whole range of bees, from bumble to itty-bitty unknown. Bye bye, fence. Speaking of too many berries… the raspberry room’s walls have filled in nicely. I think I’ll put a floor in there this summer. Some nice flat pavers would definitely keep the raspberries from trying to reclaim the whole space and make sitting in there a bit easier. This one’s a little hard to catch in a photo, but it never ceases to amaze me how fast time flies and things grow and fill in. This pond and hill didn’t exist when I bought the place. Then, I dug a hole, piled up some excess compost, and planted some little shrubs and a Cornelian cherry tree, which was… about 3-4′ high, as I recall. That tree’s about 10-12′ now and the hill is a thick jungle of goumi berries, blueberries, aronias, and big patches of hosta and ornamental grasses. I’m at the point where I need to start moving some stuff just to make room for everyone to spread out a little. Ah well, while I’m sitting inside, I can see the sky is full of birds and bees flittering around, and I can hear all those sounds that tell me that the Urban Hayseed Research Facility is open for business. Better get to work. TweetTweet
This is kinda funny. It’s a post I wrote a year and a half ago, but I never published. Sounds like I’d had a lot of coffee that day. This weekend, my son’s most excellent elementary school had their annual Harvest Festival. This year, I was asked to MC the booth on mason bees. Actually, I think I was asked to do more than that, but I wasn’t paying attention. In any case, we managed to pull together the requisite chunks of wood, drill bits, The ACTUAL Handout, and, most importantly, volunteers. As you may have figured out by now, I have an opinion. On everything. What’s more, I am convinced that you want to hear every excruciating detail of my opinion and the research that went into forming it. You do, right? Just say something if you don’t. I’ll wait… OK. That settles it. Have you noticed how mason bee houses, mine included, typically have two characteristics: vertical orientation (i.e., taller than wide) and very regular spacing of holes (i.e., a grid pattern)? To add insult to injury, they are usually not decorated. And let us not forget obsessing about hole size. Perfect, smooth, 9/32″ holes. Anything else, and you’re committing apian genocide. My impression from my experience with the little buggers, though, implies:
You know what else? Those unlined wood blocks are not a great idea in the first place. They get all gunked up, infested with parasites, etc. So, you have to clean them out. The problem is that the bees are moving in about the same time they’re moving out. There’s always someone living in the them. So… to clean them out, you pretty much have to drill out the holes… with… the little bees, uh… yeah… You should really use liners. Annnnyway, there I am… at this booth… dozens of people coming and going… many of them about eight years old… and I start ranting about all this minutia. They all look at me like, ‘hey, dork, just hand me a drill… I wanna make my birdhouse…‘ For you see, not only did they not want to hear my raving about the details, roughly a third of them wondered why people were drilling such tiny holes in their birdhouses. A few people explained that they couldn’t have these in their yard because they were “allergic to yellowjackets and stuff”. I must learn to remember that just because I’m obsessed with a topic doesn’t mean that everyone else is. From now on: Tweet |
|||||
|
Copyright © 2012 Urban Hayseed, LLC - All Rights Reserved |
|||||
Recent Comments