Rummaging

Yesterday afternoon I spent a lot of time at Stratford Garden Centre, which seems to be turning into my new spiritual home, carefully selecting plants for the containers on the patio. This is a thoroughly unlovely space, probably dating back to the 1970s when a modern extension was added to the back of the old house, and it really should be replaced, or at least relaid with nicer stone. But on the whole we feel that it would be more fun to build a nice big mound of fifty-pound notes, set fire to it, and dance around the pyre, so the patio stays (at least till one of us trips over an unevenly laid concrete slab and breaks a limb), and I do what I can to improve it.

Today I spent much of the day emptying containers and refilling them. I hoped to complete the job, so as to be able to score another nice red line across the Beastly Garden List, but late this afternoon I came to a horrible realisation. "I think," I said to R, channelling my inner Roy Scheider, "we're going to need more plants." The snorting noise he made in response was probably due to a pollen allergy or something.

Throughout the day I'd made a few circuits of the garden with the camera in search of bees and such, but it was a fiercely sunny day and nothing wanted to be out and about for very long, so I was regularly frustrated by the sight of insects flying directly into the middle of shrubs, or landing on the surface of leaves but then immediately disappearing underneath them, into the shade. By dinner time I'd only taken about a dozen photos, all of which I hated, and I was getting nervous. But once the sun started to dip behind the surrounding trees and the temperature dropped a bit, a few bees and hoverflies appeared in the last patch of sunlight at the top of the wild garden, and I was able to get some better images.

I wouldn't normally choose to post an insect against a background as messy as this, but in this case the messy environment is actually the point. The bee is one of the Nomadas - Obsidentify is 100% sure that she's Nomada flava, and I'm inclined to agree, though I doubt the BWARS records verifier will be as unequivocal - and she was searching for mining bee nests among all the leaf and twig litter along the garden boundary. Just off to the right of frame is a wire leaf cage, where I've put some shredded hedge clippings and the leaves I recently removed from the wildlife pond, and she even spent quite a bit of time in there, just checking things out. It's news to me that mining bees might nest in loose plant debris, long before it's had time to turn itself into compost or leaf mould, but I guess it's possible that there's a nest underneath the cage, which is only five-sided and doesn't have a base, and perhaps she could smell mining bee activity. The Flavous Nomad Bee primarily parasitises Chocolate Mining Bee nests, and it amuses me to think that Andrena scotica might possibly give off a faint whiff of Willie's Cacao.