Friday, May 22, 2020

Friday 22nd May

 Serendipity;  the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way. or.....

The faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for.

I used that word the other day on Y/P blog and thought about it.  'Dipping into serenity' was my first thought, a clever use of a word, but it was Horace Walpole,  in 1754 who first used it and wrote it down.


old photo of foxglove
 So what was my serendipitous moment yesterday.  Well there I was reading about the mating of carder bees, when Brigit Howard put a little video of the act in progress, single bees, like the carder bees, are different in their approach to sex.  Has it never occurred to anyone though, that the queen bee is the residential head of the household, the male bee is very inferior and normally dies after mating, how did that switching of power happen I wonder?

Sometimes I love the shape of leaves better than the flowers
When I took my mug of tea into the garden in the evening, there were several honeybees on the perennial geraniums and a white tailed bumble bee in the bush my day was complete.


Just been shopping at 7 o clock, joy of joys, my weekly outing, along with Lucy who just likes to ride in the car. A grey horse and rider went past the gate and we greeted each other - life is so exciting ;).  I have taken to do my weekly shop in the small Co-op in Kirkby, it is easier they have all that I need, and the shelves are already beginning to fill up, could it be that the panic is over? Toilet rolls on the shelves, read an interesting  article on bidets yesterday, not something cultivated in Britain but I will not digress into the subject some might find  it distasteful but they do save an awful lot of tree lives.


12 comments:

  1. Interesting comment about bidets and not too much information either! Pleased to see that you too love Perennial Geraniums as much as I do. I 'collect' them - some thrive and some just don't care for me at all. I find their leaves just as enjoyable as their flowers - and incidentally few of mine are actually in flower yet and I would have thought you were higher than here (600 feet) Hope you had a good rain as we did for a couple of hours in the night.

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    1. Yes in this garden there are three great monsters of the perennial geranium, they keep the creeping buttercup at bay. Always have honeybees on them. Last year I sent off for more of these geraniums but never received three, think the grower must have gone into bankruptcy or something.

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  2. A serendipitous blogpost Thelma. I have seen bidets but have never used one. How is a bidet user meant to dry their nether parts after use? When bees get back to the hive do they sit on their beedets? And, alluding to your previous post, is there an International Beedet?

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    1. Such a lot of questions Y/P, you use towels of course, derriere should be clean after wash. Yes I have seen bidets in France and thought them strange but it was really a fascinating discussion on their use and usefulness. Well I have never gone into the loo habits of bees, perhaps it is further along in the book!

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  3. Bees disappearing into foxgloves and in a few weeks antirrhinums: always delights.

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  4. It is their little furry behinds that makes you think how sweet. Poor little sods working hard to provide us with their spoonful of honey for our toast.

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  5. My dear husband will be so glad he didn't get reincarnated as a male carder bee!! Brigit's posts are so interesting and I spent last summer trying to identify the bees in our garden (carrying on this year now).

    I have perennial geraniums in the garden here - the once prolific apple-scented leaf variety which once dominated are now totally overwhelmed with the Weeping Widow, which the bees absolutely ADORE.

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  6. Weeping Widow never heard of that one before, will go and look it up. Brigit's book is very well written, it is a shame that there are no photographs though.

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  7. My parents installed a bidet in the bathroom of my childhood house after we had all left home, not sure why they waited until after we had left! They also have one in their current house too. I haven't bought a toilet roll in ages, we only have it in the house for visitors and we have not had any of those for a while....

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  8. Bidets are not very 'British' I say that with a grin on my face, but I believe in Italy it is compulsory to have one.

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  9. The role of the "boys" in the beehive is very narrow, isn't it! Did you ever see this poem?

    GIRLS, GIRLS

    When the boys are alone,
    they wash the dishes with facecloths.

    When a honeybee is alone — rare, very rare —
    it tastes the sweetness
    it lives inside all the time.

    What pollen are we gathering, anyway?
    Bees take naps, too.
    Maybe honeybees taste pollen side by side
    pretending they’re alone.
    Maybe the concept of “alone” means nothing
    in a hive.

    A bumblebee is not a honeybee.
    It only pretends to be.

    The cell phone in your pocket
    buzzes against your leg.
    It’s not a honeybee, though. It’s just a
    mining bee, or leaf-cutter, or
    carpenter.

    You’re stung by messages from people far away.
    You can’t make anyone well.
    You can’t stop a war.
    What good are you?

    Bees drink from thousands of flowers,
    spitting up nectar
    so you may have honey
    in your tea.

    Maybe you don’t want to think about it
    so much.
    Pass the honey please.

    During winter, bees lock legs
    and beat wings fast to stay warm.
    Fifty thousand bees can live in
    a single hive.
    Clover honey is most popular
    and clover is a weed.
    All the worker bees are female.
    Why is that no surprise?

    -Naomi Shihab Nye, from Honeybee

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  10. Sorry I missed this Joanne, what a lovely poem about bees, I think I shall copy it and use it in a blog if I may.

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