TINY BEE

This tiny bee is feeding on a salvia blossom. The bee looks like it wouldn't be able to fly against a mild breeze! I think they're called sweat bees, not the typical bee that buzzes & stings, etc. To give you an idea of just how tiny it is, salvia has many tiny blossoms along a spike, and many spikes make up the plant. This enlarged picture is deceiving. In fact, I never realized the individual flowerets were so detailed until I saw them in this severely cropped picture.

I was lucky to get this shot, and I was worried that blip might deny the posting because it was too small - like yesterday's spider. I'm happy to see it shows the wings and markings on the bee's body so clearly.

I spent several hours today shoveling wood chip mulch into a wheelbarrow, and then distributing it along the borders of the yard. Suddenly a huge, very interesting looking spider sprang out of the wheelbarrow mulch. He was creamy white with a brown stripe down his body, the body was well over an inch long, and the legs even longer. I threw off my gardening gloves and ran for my camera. But alas, he didn't photograph well, and didn't have an interesting face, so he wasn't in the running for blip after all. I figured since he'd lived through being loaded into a dump truck, dumped in a driveway and shoveled into a wheelbarrow, that he was a survivor so I gave him a free ride to the grass and let him go.