Mexican Torch Sunflowers

These are beautiful flowers. The plants are short (4 ft tall) and branched, with many flowers per plant. I only had one plant survive transplanting out of 4 (one got accidentally weeded by someone else), but it proved attractive to people (until late in the season) and butterflies alike. If you like taking pictures of butterflies, they sit still on these flowers long enough to allow even a novice to get a good shot. It bloomed from mid-summer into the fall, but looked a bit straggly in the cooler weather, right up until hard freeze. Good plant.

Confused Bees?

Look at this! Bees on tasselling corn! Maybe they're desperate for pollen. It was an interesting sight last week.

Bees are Here

The Crepe Myrtles are blooming, as they always do in the hottest part of the summer, providing a splash of color in a sun-scorched, humidity-hazed world, though it is wonderfully cool (mid 80s for a high) today. The bees love them. The branches bend above my tomato plants, and I am tall, so they buzz near my ears. As a child their presence would have terrified me, but now I find we are all busy about our set tasks, and we don't really bother each other. Here is a bee on the borage, which continues to bloom even after the plant falls over in a rain shower. The plant just grows new upward spikes. 

Bumblebee Fun

I like bumblebees. Evidently they are a native American pollinator (honeybees hail from Europe,as do some species of Bumblebees,though they may originally be from Asia, according to Wikipedia). Bumblebees even shake flowers in such a way as to pollinate tomatoes really well. They also pollinate squashes (hope, hope, hope) and other native American plants. As you can see from the picture, they love the borage. I think this is a Bombus bimaculatus, according to the pictures on http://www.bumblebee.org/NorthAmerica.htm .  They are fun to watch, too, as you realize that God likes to mess with our scientific minds a bit; He makes something as un-aerodynamic as possible, then makes it fly, even after it bashes its head against the wall looking for its nest several times. I like backyard science, and photographing things that don't mind the camera, and wondering at the creative power of God out there. I hope you do, too.

A Friendly Beast

As a break from the non-stop slugfest (caught 70 more this morning before dawn, mostly tiny ones), here's a picture of a much friendlier backyard companion, on a huge, but neglected rosemary bush in the neighborhood. It is blooming, and a bee showed up to take advantage. Click on the picture and look. Already covered with pollen! That is one hard-working bee. I hope she has lots of friends (or her queen has lots of babies) to help pollinate my garden this summer. I would like to learn beekeeping someday.