For The Love Of Bees.

The foe of bees is heard all over the neighbourhood's lawns.

I was most annoyed and dismayed to hear the buzz of lawnmowers in our village. What about the bees? Surely by now folks have heard about the plight of bees and their lack of available food? Well, not here as you can see. A luscious smorgasbord awaits.

Soon the fight will ensue between Bob and I. As long as possible I am the champion for our bees' snacks. Hold thumbs.

The dandelions are ubiquitous in our yard and sometime soon I must try and use the leaves in a salad or to make a cup of herbal tea.

So far our neighbour has heeded to my pleas. Or perhaps it has to do with his fruit trees not bearing as much fruit as ours last year...

A happy patron on our lawn. Let's hope we will turn the tide of bees dying out. Each of us can make a difference and in any case, the lawns are much more cheerful when clad in yellows and whites...

Biggi

Not Keeping Up With The Joneses...

For Bees' sake!

Monday morning saw me on the road to Güssing killing four birds with a simple stone. A visit to our bank in Deutsch Schützen, a quick top up at the local garage as the chariot has been warning us about a low level of engine cooler ( the owner of Pree is the best and most helpful ever ), a nice hour of catching up with a resident of the Güssing Old Age Home and of course the replenishing of our larder at the appropriate shops. Gosh, what a busy bee I was.

Monday seems to be the Designer Mummies shopping escape after dropping juniors off at school...big SUV's and dressed in skinny designer gear. Anyway as I was driving into town, traffic was non existent and it afforded me the opportunity to have a squizz at the brightly coloured verges everywhere.

The dandelions dotted the emerald green grass with yellow delight and the mere fact that they were so abundant and tall could mean only one thing...Güssing's Mayor is putting bees before neatness. Well, I assume he is because wherever I drove about in his town, the lawns had that divine hippie flair.

Somehow I have a feeling that it might just be the garden service off sick but one can hope, can't one? Bees are already having such a torrid time finding fare in our modern crazy world that it surely wouldn't hurt us to wait a few more weeks to chop the lawns.

Driving back home through Deutsch Schützen or rather buzz cut central, the lawns are folding like dominoes to the collective peer pressure of wanting to not be outdone by the Joneses. Even here in Eisenberg they are not immune to it and the buzzing of a plethora of lawnmowers is constant. Bob's already chomping at the bit but so far the bees have the upper hand and enough to eat.

Biggi

Do You Like Honey?

To mow or not to mow...

Somehow it is becoming a bit of an annual event with us but I have a sneaking suspicion that the Bobster does it just for the fun of seeing me take off from sedate to irate. Men do have that quality!

We are all so scared of not fitting in, or being pointed out for unsavoury reasons that often we leave common sense and age old wisdom by the wayside. Let's talk honey for a moment. The real kind, the bee kind.

Honey is just the tip of the iceberg of what a bee produces. Without bees we wouldn't eat. Pollination, pollination and some more pollination. Buzzing about as they do, they need nourishment. Nourishment they garner from eg, dandelions. Dandelions, most people don't know what they look like because they are obsessed with keeping a neat lawn. A green boring bit of grass.

Back to our marital tiff. I fight tooth and nail for the bees in our neck of the woods and go supersonic if Bob takes the lawnmower out to destroy the buffet table of our bees. The neighbours will just have to look a while longer at our delightfully colourful lawn. A happy lawn, a buzzing lawn, a lifesaver of a lawn.

A lot of folks will put me into the tree hugger category, but here is a little proof...

Our neighbour keeps his lawn razor sharp, neat and weed free on a weekly basis. Fair enough, each to his own. We have adjacent back lawns with both of us having at least 15 fruit trees on them. Last year the branches of our trees almost broke under the weight of the abundant fruit bounty yet, our neighbour ( his trees were only meters from ours ) had hardly any fruit and in fact asked to get some plums from our trees. Even though he was amazed out our fruit abundance, he didn't quite believe my explanation of it as I have seen him mowing his lawn a few times already.

Biggi

Isn't it a nice?

A Perfectly Manicure Lawn Isn't Good For Bees.

The penny finally dropped.

Friday afternoon saw the two of us working in our back garden. A garden that we've slightly neglected over the last few months. Time and laziness issues. But, our back garden is more of an orchard with at least 20 fruit trees in it and mowing it isn't that easy either as it is more of a hilly obstacle course.

Bob had had enough yesterday and started on the grass ( which stood about 60 cm high ). Grass might be a misnomer, as it was more a carpet of wildflowers of varying colours, uses and sizes.

As we walked about, we both noticed the same thing...almost all of our fruit trees were laden with fruit. Laden might be an understatement, as the branches were bowing under the weight. We've been here for five years, and our place stood empty for a few years prior and thus it's safe to assume that our orchard is organic. The prolific manifestation of fruit isn't due to some lab result but to the bees.

We tend to assume ( and stand to be corrected ) that our lack of mowing has a positive effect on the bee population in our neighbourhood. We are just about the last lawn left, that isn't always pretty as a picture.

What's irritating to the neighbours, is manna from heaven for the bees!

Both of us were glad to have done a good deed or rather provided a good smorgasbord for the buzzies but now were faced with a bigger problem...

" Honey, just look at all those plums! A bumper crop for my Schnapps. "

Well, I let him dream for a bit, as I was already thinking and planning all the various plum jam combinations we could make. Plum & lavender, plum & chocolate, plum & chilli or plain old plum jam.

A possible compromise might be reached....half for Schnapps purposes and half for jam. The other fruit variety to be had is of course a selection of apples. Each apple tree is a different type and I foresee a winter filled with divine pancakes topped with homemade apple sauce.

Biggi

The Bees Are Back In Town!

A buzz is in the air everywhere...

It might look just like another bee story to you, but I am so glad to hear their happy buzz. Without bees, how would we eat?

Our front step has morphed into a front row seat...we planted two small lavender plants a few years ago and they have taken roots despite the at times less than optimum treatment.

This is the content lavender outside our front door. The fragrant, heady lavender fragrance presents a wonderful welcome as we walk into our house.

Even without their constant paper weights, the combination of green with purple is magnificent. These blossoms are slowly opening up and each day the lavender becomes more intense in colour.

Well, there is one of the paper weights making sure we've got a steady supply of crops.

Perhaps they like our house because it still is with old doors and mostly unadorned with modern chemicals. Having neat houses and gardens does entail a lot of harmful chemicals. Paints, plastics, weed poison and the list of bee killers is endless...

One could almost use the well worn idiom:

Cutting off our noses to spite our faces.

Our collective trait to have everything look perfect ( for eh, who actually? ) might endanger nature even more.

Biggi

Dear Bees, Please Buzz Back To Us.

The bees are missing.

We've been brave and hopefully trendsetting in not mowing down the first green and wild flowery appearances on our lawn. Looking about our village, it seems that the Bobster and I are the unnoticed trendsetters. Oh yes, lawns have been given the short, back & sides cropping. Bob gave in a little bit to peer pressure and neatened the edges of our lawn. Yes, a bit of a domestic standoff in our household...

But, when I mentioned our attempt to lay out the red carpet for the bees, it was pointed out to me that the armada of bees is missing. Ambling among the golden field of dandelions which are really happily showing off their beauty, it came to my attention that there was no buzz.

In the years gone by, there usually would be that collective buzz outside. A merry mingling and catching up while hovering over the various blossoms provided. The lack of it frightens me terribly. Who will pollinate all the crops? More importantly, what has happened to those hard working bees?

Has our addiction to aesthetics and greed finally tipped the balance and sent the bees to extinction? All well and good having a pristine garden with nary a weed in sight, or having the perfect looking vegetable, but have you ever thought about the effect all of it has on the bees?

Others say that the various unseen rays flitting about everywhere, mainly the wifi ones, are confusing the bees or rather disorientating them with the result that worldwide the bee populations are reducing at an alarming rate.

At times it seems that the Bobster and I are the only ones not whipping out a Smartphone at the drop of a hat, the appearance of a cappuccino, a decoratively arranged plate of food or that recent craze of pouting ones lips in an alarming manner for an ubiquitous selfi.

Kind of ironic, that perhaps an Apple started the ball rolling...

Biggi

A bee from last year...

Bees Can't Get Enough Of Our Garden, Especially The Lavender Shrub.

A left alone garden does the trick of providing plenty of food for our bees.

A hovercraft couldn't have landed better. It is far from easy catching a bee in flight as they are so quick between meals. A fast food bee...

Honestly I don't know whether this is the same bee, as we have literally dozens buzzing merrily away. Believe me, I took a lot of photos in order to get this one. When you look through the lens of the camera, it isn't easy to spot such a small thing.

There are different types of bees in our lavender shrub. These ones seem slightly smaller and perhaps are of a lower standing in a bee hive?

I am sure that wherever this bees make their honey, it must have a fair amount of lavender flavour in it. They can spend all day in our lavender and the only time they hover off is when we water the lavender. But only for a second...

The bee looks full as a tick and is perhaps off home to salute its queen.

Biggi