June 14 Bumbilicious Video

I love the convenience of the Flip Video. It may be time to consider using a hi-def model. The two videos herein are provided for your audio and visual enjoyment.

Friends of the Garden

Just did a bit of snipping and dead-heading on my flowers this morning, when along came one of my garden friends.

Well hello there, it's a very loud bumble bee.

Since I think its benign buzzing sound is worthy of being captured, I grabbed my Flip Video and caught some nice video of this bee performing its rounds through my torenia, bacopa and back into the torenia (I have blue and two varieties of a red/violet).

This is a daily morning ritual for this bee. I note that the bee is lingering more and more, perhaps the insect needs to wait for the torenia to be "mature" enough to provide sufficient pollen? Lots of movement from this guy today. And yes, the video reveals this bee is ready for his close-up, Mr. DeMille. Buzzed right up to the video and just about bumped into me several times. Yes, that is me backing out of his way.

Hmm, is this where we get the word "bumbling"?

As my video caught the bee moving off to another patch of bacopa, I noticed something NEW right there on my unopened calla. First, a word about that calla. That is a healthy plant with a spath unopened for approximately 2 weeks (sigh). I am just going to state that I have callas for lovely foliage plants this year. It appears that more sun would be needed to provide those gorgeous yellow flowers. OK, back to the bugs...

I am thrilled to spot a new visitor -- a ladybug!

Please enjoy the following short video (click on left arrow to play) which includes a bee, a ladybug and the accompanying sounds of local songbirds.

This is how western Long Island, NY, sounds in the early summer. Delightful.

Next month, it will be full of the droning of air-conditioners and then August's sounds will be dominated by cicadas. Ah, but June belongs to the songbirds as they lay their eggs and care for their brood. The dominant song is, I believe, of the very close-by Cardinal (see my early post on the pair).

Hmm, does that word relate to "brooding" as in a deep and prolonged thought? Is it possible that my garden is driving me to improve my vocabulary? Nah.

Here is a second video highlighting the view of my 2 tier planting system. I'm loving the lushness of all this. Again, songbirds.