Six Flowers for Bees

Our garden is quite small, but we fit in flowers, herbs, vegetables and fruit, all mixed in together, we don't have separate areas for each. I didn't originally plan the garden to attract wildlife it just seems to have evolved that way! Probably because myself and the children love watching and listening to the wildlife, we have a variety, including hedgehogs, birds, insects and of course lovely bees. Growing flowers that attract bees, both helps the bees that are in decline, and helps with the pollination of our produce. So I thought I would share six flowers in our garden that the bees seem to love.

Borage

Borage is a beautiful plant, an annual, with delicate blue flowers, easy to grow, and a prolific self seeder. It's considered to be a herb, and has a cucumber smell and taste. If you are planning on drinking Pimms this summer, you need your own borage garnish, and the bees will thank you for growing it too. I've grown it from seed once, and now I just let it self seed. If the self seeded plants don't grow quite where I want them, I transplant to other areas of the garden once they have about four leaves.  Borage is beautiful, easy to grow, and the bees absolutely love it.

Bee on Borage Flower

Toadflax

Now this plant I love, but it is a bit controversial as some people think of it as a weed, it  grows naturally on waste lands, and self seeds prolifically. I personally don't find this a problem, I just pull up what I don't want, or transplant elsewhere, or you could make sure you dead head before it seeds. The positives out way the negatives for me. It's a perennial and can grow quite big once established, up to 1metre tall and it has lovely silvery foliage. Mine is a pink toadflax, which has delicate light pink flowers, and you can also get purple toadflax. I've recently noticed some deep purple toadflax growing nearby, which I would really like to have growing in the garden too. Again the bees love this plant, mine is always covered in bees, it's the most popular plant in my garden with the bees at the minute, and often there are a variety of different bees on the plant at any one time.

Toadflax with Bee

Sage

A perennial herb, so a plant that's useful, and attractive to bees. Great for those that cook, you can use the leaves fresh, or cut and dry ready for winter use, when the plant naturally dies back. There are some lovely variegated varieties too, we have a couple of different types, and I love their slightly furry leaves that add texture to garden beds. Plus they have spikes of blue flowers that are attractive to the bees. For some reason I have one plant that seems to flower earlier than the others, and it's always one of the first plants available for the bees in the spring, which I'm sure they're thankful for.

Bee on a Sage Flower

Antirrhinum (Snapdragon)

These annual flowers were chosen by the children for their section of garden. I've said annual, as that's how they tend to be grown, although in my wildlife (lazy!) gardening techniques some of my snapdragon plants actually survived from last year. They have also self sown round the garden. The children picked them initially because they liked the bright colours, plus they like squeezing the sides and making them snap, as I did in my childhood! However an added bonus is some of the bees seem to like them, they squeeze themselves inside, and practically disappear inside, and re appear a while later! The snapdragons aren't as popular as some of the other plants and I'm thinking it may be a certain bee that has the ability to fully utilise this plant? However I'm pleased, as it means some of the plants I never realised were obviously attractive to bees are. In the photo below you can see the pollen sac on the bees back leg, as it heads into the snapdragon. 

Bee Entering Snapdragon with Pollen Sac

Lavender

I wanted an edging to our raised beds, and was thinking of low hedge ideas, as you might be realising by now, I like flowers, colour, fragrance and so couldn't contemplate having just a green leaved hedge. Although the birds might have preferred this. So eventually I opted for lavender, which is in it's second year of planting this year, the plants have now merged together. I initially planted them 30cm apart, and they are now starting to look like a low hedge. When they are in  flower, they're a beautiful blue, and are covered in bees.

Lavender

Thyme

Another perennial herb, and one that I use a lot in my cooking, so definitely a useful culinary plant for the garden. The added bonus is when it flowers, it gets absolutely covered in flowers, and then it also gets covered in bees. The bees love it.

Bee Enjoying Thyme Flowers

An added bonus with some of these plants, is if you let them self seed, you get a natural planting scheme, and can just tinker with it. Transplanting or pulling out plants you don't want. It also works out cheaper, as you are not buying new plants all the time, and also the swathes of flowers that you get often look good together. This is my gardening style, very changeable and natural, plus I don't have a lot of time so I let nature help me.

I've found this bumble bee identification website, that looks great for trying to identifying which bees are visiting the garden. However I'm still having trouble identifying mine! I thought that most of the above were white tailed, as that's what they seem to have, but looking at the chart they could also be a buff tailed bumblebee, and the one heading into the snapdragon could be a garden bumble bee? We also get quite a few in the garden that have orange tipped tails too, like the bee in the Borage photo above. Does anybody have any more tips on differentiating them, or other useful websites? Maybe I just need more experience, or to spend more time watching them. 

Sharing Happiness

As I was decluttering the other day, I realised that I had items stored away for sentimental reasons, that I'd forgotten about! These things were shut away in a cupboard, and were not bringing anybody any happiness shut away, out of sight. Having recently read the The Happiness Project I decided to address this and got the items out to have a look at.

 

My daughter particularly was keen to see it all too. One collection of items were the bits and pieces from my wedding, including my dress, that believe it or not she had never seen! So we got my wedding dress out, and she had such a lovely time looking at the details and feeling the fabrics. Then she tried it on, you could just see from her face the happiness this bought her. She said she felt like a princess.

Then I also found my shoes and tiara, I didn't even realise I still had my shoes! I really didn't wear them much on the day, I remember as soon as we got to the reception I took them off and went barefoot for the rest of the day. I'm much more comfortable with bare feet. I'm never going to wear the wedding shoes again, so they are now living in my daughters dressing up box, where they will bring her a lot more pleasure than sat in a cardboard box in a random cupboard somewhere! My daughter loved trying it all on, as you can see from the photos below.

She wore the tiara and a beaming smile all day! 

Do you have anything stored away that would bring happiness to your children? My recommendation is to get it out and use it, or at least have a look at it together and build some new great memories. I'm so glad I did. 

Mint Moth

While out in the garden yesterday, the children spotted something small fluttering around the marjoram. On closer look there were several of them, at least 6 we counted and they looked like small butterflies. When they stopped to rest on the marjoram they rested with their wings open, showing off their beautiful colouring, a purple brown colour with gold markings. I had a vague recollection that if they rested for a longer period with their wings open they could be moths rather than butterflies. Although it was daytime, and I tend to think of moths as being generally nocturnal, so I wasn't sure!

So after some searching I discovered that they were  micro moths, called Mint moths, also known as Pyrausta aurata. Apparently they get their name from the caterpillars, that like to feed on mint plants. We do have a pineapple mint plant in the garden, so maybe they have been feasting on that. Also the moth itself likes marjoram, so that makes sense why my marjoram had lots on it, and they fly day and night. So it's a myth that all moths come out at night, some fly during the day too.

Mint Moth

If you have some marjoram in the garden, have a look on the leaves or flowers and see if you have this little moth in your garden. It's really pretty. Have you spotted them before in your garden?

Cardboard, cardboard everywhere!

We have a shelf with arts and craft stuff, and as part of that I keep a bag of old cardboard,mainly boxes of various shapes and sizes. A mixture is better, as there is more scope for imagination. So any old boxes, tissue, cereal, egg, shoe, toothpaste etc...., plus rolls, toilet and kitchen, and any other interesting cardboard packaging. I keep it all in one big mesh bag, any extra goes to recycling and I top it up as necessary. Best of all this is free and easy to do, and can provide hours of entertainment for children.

Our Bag of Boxes

In the past we have used the boxes to do junk modelling, I basically let the children design and make whatever they want. Let them loose with the bag of boxes and a roll of sellotape. I can highly recommend getting a sellotape dispenser, and then they can be more independent and do the sticky taping themselves. You just have to be prepared that loads will get used! We have found that sticky tape works much better than trying to stick it all together with glue, where you have to wait for it to dry and pieces often don't stay where they put either. Below is a dog that my son made with boxes and a couple of extra bits, pompoms, and shapes he cut out of coloured paper, for ears, nose and tail.

Junk Model Dog

Recently they have been getting things out of the bag to make set ups for games, so using the boxes as various buildings/homes, including tubes as spaceships etc for characters in their games. It's amazing the imagination a cardboard box can spark off. They set it all out, making great games up, that can keep them occupied for ages. 


So why not give it a try, even if you are short of space, even a few pieces will do, and it's great for developing a child's imagination. There is no prescribed way to play with it, it has no on and off switch unless they draw one on!, and it makes no noise unless they turn the boxes into drums or guitars!. Yes mine have done all these things! It's a lot of fun for the children and great to see what they will create next. The photos below show what mine did recently with their boxes, with a few additional bits of their toys and other bits from the craft cupboard, such as paper plates,and fabrics. It may not look much to us as adults but I can assure you my children got immense fun from their game. They chose to get the bag out, and what they wanted to use, set it up and got on with playing. Simples.

Fairy Home

So if you don't already do this, I can recommend trying it, it's a useful free activity to do at home, particularly as it's the summer holidays. Maybe keep a few boxes, and if your children complain they're bored, give them a load of boxes and some sticky tape and see what happens!? Maybe you already do this with your children, what creations have they come up with? I'd love to hear about them.

Lovely visit to the beach

So this afternoon, my daughter needed to run, actually cartwheel off some steam before bed time so we decided to make a quick trip to the beach. With no expectations, except to enjoy the glorious weather and low tide, the children wanted to wear their swim things and took a towel each. One took a spade with them, the other took a plastic screwdriver and saw (don't ask why, I'm not sure either!)

They both had a dip in the sea, and then daughter ran up and down manically, followed by trying to break the world record for consecutive cartwheels! While son tootled off to search for all things natural, as is his way. Once daughter had got rid of the excess energy, well some of it, she joined her brother in the nature spotting, mainly in the little pools along the groynes. We found quite a lot.

Mussels

Anenome

Hermit Crab

Fossil Shells

Crab

Razor Fish Shell

We found this too, not sure if it is a small fish or a shrimp as both were around in the pools. It's very well camouflaged with the sand. Anybody have any idea what it is?

Daughter interspersed the nature spotting with other activities as well, she loves to fill as much into life as possible. So some drawing in the sand, with borrowed screwdriver and saw from her brother, (they were useful!).

And a game of jump the waves, which the sea was just perfect for today, small, shallow ripply waves and lots of them.

During the nature hunting, we realised it would be good to have a net and a big bucket. There was another family pool hunting too, and they caught some lovely things to look at, they shared and showed us their finds. We decided we would like to do that too, so I need to add a net and a bucket to our shopping list before our next visit.

I think we were then tuned into our surroundings, as on our walk home we noticed a bee on the lovely purple thistles, and a load of ants, some winged, some not, preparing for the nuptial flight (according to hubbie who keeps ants for a hobby!) 

Bee on a Thistle

Winged Ants

So that was our trip to the beach, none of the activities planned, just child led, following their interests, and what's fun for them. An amazing 45 minutes of happiness.

Medieval Theme

We have started a medieval theme on Great Little Minds, starting with some knights to colour in

My son's favourite page completed

Also as part of our medieval theme, today we have been enjoying the Usborne sticker dressing knights. A great sticker book that can be used both at home or out and about. It has various different scenes, all depicting a different area of interest, including a castle seige, and a feast. At the top of the page you get a little bit of information about the scene, and then the main figures on the pages are unclothed, and stickers are provided for you to dress them, plus there are some extra stickers of animals or objects to help fill out the scene. The book contains over 200 stickers, and we found it took a couple of different sittings to finish the whole book, but it definitely held my son's interest as he kept coming back to it.

The book that got my 7 year old reading by torch light.

This book has been sat on the shelf for a while, we've been reading others, and others have always got chosen. Until it finally got picked off the shelf to be read. Now we're talking a 7 year old boy, who can read well, and will read non fiction books independently, likes joke books, and poems, and can read fiction but doesn't normally pick up a book and choose to read it himself. He normally prefers to still have fiction books read to him. Which is fine and this is what we have been doing. I'm quite happy still reading to my children, as it's time spent together, snuggled up enjoying a story. Honestly, some of the books I really enjoy too, wanting to know what happens next etc.

So for some reason, this book has captured his interest, we got to the end of a chapter of me reading aloud. It ended on a cliffhanger, like so many of the other books we read, to draw you into the next chapter. Except none of the others have ever had quite enough draw. The line that did it, "The packet of maggots was gone" That did it, and then he was reading the next chapter in bed using his torch, and then the next morning he read another three chapters, and I actually had to call him out of his room to have breakfast. Any idea of the book yet? 

I have no exact idea, why this one. It doesn't seem a lot different to a lot of the others we've read with a similar format. This is a fiction book but with science facts scattered through the book, in factoid boxes. It mentions a lot of bodily functions, snot, farts etc. so made to appeal to the boy market predominantly.  Maybe that's what did it, or the storyline, or maybe it isn't the book but actually where my son is at, or any combination. Whatever it is, for the past few days I've had a bookworm who can't take his head out of this book. Which book? This book.......

Has Disgusting Dave had the same effect on your child? Apparently there are some others, so we may have to invest in those and see if they are as enticing.