Bee do bee do bee do

I am sitting here, trying to type as best I can with one and a half hands.  No, we haven't had another Lawnmower Incident, in case you're worrying.  Nothing so exciting. 

For a while now I have noticed a weird tiny little lump on the palm of my left hand, almost exactly in the middle.  Last night, I realised it had got a bit bigger, and so of course, I started dicking about with it.  I rubbed it, and it moved around as if there was something stuck under the skin. 

How interesting*. 

A bit more dicking around, and I realised that there was a little lump of something under the skin.  I fiddled with it a bit.

Well, what would you have done? 

I kept playing with it till I had managed to squeeze the lump right out.  It was hard, like a bit of chalk, or a teeny bit of gravel or something.  Very weird.

Once the initial excitement of getting a foreign body out of my hand (right out from under my SKIN!  Ew!) had passed, I inspected the damage.  There's a surprisingly large hole there now, which is bloody sore.  As the evening wore on, it got more and more painful, till I ended up slathering it in antiseptic and sticking a plaster over it.  Now it just looks absurd.  A plaster right across the palm of your hand makes you look like some clumsy galoot who has had a run-in with a particularly tough ketchup bottle.  It's really not impressive, and it feels weird.

This morning, as part of the Spring Madness that is currently gripping the WithaY household**, we went out to the local garden centre and bought a load of plants.  We've got some thyme planted in the flowerbed in front of the house, so it will smell nice as we walk past, and whenever the postman tramples on it.  We planted some Woodruff under the huge hedge out the front, which (apparently) will brighten up a gloomy corner.  We'll see.

We planted two blackcurrant bushes in the fruit bed out the back.  I have high hopes.  The raspberry canes have started to show some green shoots, and the redcurrant bushes have lots of buds.  There might be jam in the summer.

There are now two new climbing roses against the fence at the side of the house, but I am not very confident about them as the soil there is terrible***.  I chucked in a load of compost from a bag, but if they aren't happy then we will have to move them. 

More roses have been planted in the front garden; two ramblers at the side of the drive in an attempt to repress the weeds, and two taller bushy ones in the bed the other side of the drive to add some height and colour.  Fingers crossed that they don't die.

We chose varieties that have old-fashioned open flowers to allow bees to get in and feed.  Apparently the more modern hybrid tea roses are not very bee-friendly.  Speaking of bees, we attempted some bee rescue yesterday.  As we sat on the bench out the front, surrounded by all the flowers showcased in the last blog post, yeah you remember, we spotted a bumble bee.  He didn't look very well. 

He sat sadly on a leaf on the bay tree, so Mr WithaY carefully picked him up and put him on the heather, in case he was hungry.  Nothing.  He just hunched up, looking wretched.

Mr WithaY decided that he needed to make up some sugar and water solution to feed the bee, in case it was too tired to find food in the flowers.

It wasn't very interested, so we left it on the heather, and hopefully it will recover.

Other gardening news:  The potatoes we planted have yet to make an appearance.  Bloody things.

My camellia's have flowered, although they are a bit feeble.  The one at my lovely Mum's house is about 8 feet tall and laden with huge flowers.  Mine do not look well by comparison.

Please admire the delightful pipework on the wall behind it.  All adds to the charm and ambience.  We've got shitloads of charm round here. 

*By which I mean "slightly gross and freaky" of course.

**Mr WithaY is spring-cleaning his study as I type.  That time of year again already. 

***I dug a hole in three different spots, each time hitting fucking hardcore or paving slabs about 4 inches down.  Lord knows what the previous occupants had buried under there.  Some kind of Doomsday bunker/fallout shelter possibly. 

Dig it

Mr WithaY has a huge crack in his windscreen.

I remember when I had to get a new windscreen.  It was like a hobby after a while.  I'm almost jealous. 

Other news:  We've been doing stuff in the garden.  We've planted up a nice terracotta trough with pink and purple heather plants to attract bees, which looks very smart.  I hope the bees wipe their tiny feet and sleek down their hair tidily before they use it.

Mr WithaY sawed one of the useless water butts in half and we are going to plant seed potatoes in it.  The seed potatoes are sprouting in the kitchen, so I expect we'll plant them next weekend. 

We also ordered the timber and topsoil to make a vegetable bed to go at the end of the back garden, and have a lot of seeds ready to plant.  Carrots, lettuce, pak choi, French beans, courgettes and onions.  Well, the onions aren't seeds, they are teeny baby onionlings.  After last year's failure, I am not bothering to plant tomatoes. 

If we grow enough courgettes, I might be able to use them for something artistic.  You never know your luck. 

We've also got a pack of wildflower seeds from the BumbleBee Conservation Trust.  Mr WithaY bought me membership as part of my birthday present, which was a lovely surprise.  You get all kinds of nice things when you join.  A car sticker, a lapel badge of a charming little bee, the aforementioned seeds, a handy poster with pictures of all the types of bee in the UK, a book on bee-friendly gardening.  Go on, join up.

I'm still thinking about getting a beehive for the garden, but I will wait till we've sorted out all the hard landscaping first I think.  While we were at the timber merchant's I picked up a brochure for hard landscaping requisites, and am now all inspired. 

It's amazing what a few hours of sunshine will do for your enthusiasm.

Heeeelp...I'm covered in bees!

Quote from today's BBC website about a truck overturning in Canada. Said truck was full of 12 million honey bees.

"The lorry was carrying 330 crates of honey bees when it tipped over on a ramp in St Leonard, New Brunswick" Ok, unfortunate accident, many bees escaped, so far so good.

However....the Deanna Troi* of Canada:

"Richard Duplain, vice president of the New Brunswick Beekeepers Association, told AP news agency the bees would quite likely be angered by their ordeal.

"You certainly don't want to go walking through a field of disoriented, agitated and wet honey bees," he said. "

I bet he has a degree in bees.



*Speciality...stating the bleeding obvious. Many furious Klingons on screen, all bellowing and raging and waving pointy sticks..."I'm sensing anger, Captain."

Bee bop a lula

I have been to help some friends celebrate their wedding.

In Cheltenham.

Well, they got married late last year in the Cook Islands (look on a map...um...everyone) and this was their "everyone who wasn't able to get there" (ie everyone) celebration.

It was lovely to see them looking fab and happy, obviously enjoying life, and partying with many friends and family.

As we were waiting for our taxi outside the venue at the end of the night, an elderly couple came walking down the steps into the car park, discussing the party.

Her: Nice evening, wasn't it?

Him: Yes. Good job I didn't have my hearing aid in...that music would have blown my head off.

Heh.

Our taxi driver was entertaining. He was a cheerful Indian guy who had dropped us off at the party earlier, and seemed really pleased to see us again. He was bemoaning the fact that it was too busy.

"Busy, busy, busy...all night long, too many calls, too many jobs! I don't see my wife, my children, no dinner, no coffee. Nothing. Aiieeeee."

He really did make that noise. I asked if he'd had anything to eat that night.

"No! I am STARVING!" he exclaimed, in such a wonderfully tragic way that we were hard put not to laugh. Bless. We gave him a tip and hopefully he got time to buy some chips or something with it.

As we left the hotel this morning I overheard the head of housekeeping giving instructions to her crew: "Tell me which rooms are really dirty. Sicky and that. You know."

Eww. Luckily our room was not sicky. Not when we left, anyway. And there's me thinking Cheltenham was posh.

Other news: I am planning to get a beehive. Not an Amy Winehouse stylee one, but a real one. With bees in it. The only real concern I have is what to call them all.

I was discussing with Mr WithaY where to position the hive. I suggested on the roof of the shed, so it's nice and sunny, and not too much of a danger in the garden.

Mr W: But won't that make it hard to get to?

Me: Bees can fly, dear.

I make myself laugh.