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Category: Photography

Gardening for Bees
The busy bee has no time for sorrow.
-William Blake

According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), 100 crop species supply 90 percent of the world’s food, and bees pollinate more than 70 percent of those crops.

As global population continues to grow, more pollinating bees are needed to feed more people.

In 2006, beekeepers began reporting widespread losses of their honeybee hives: from 30-90%. Scientists are still not certain as to the cause of this bee die-off, dubbed Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), but a report released last week by the UNEP indicates the scale is worldwide and ongoing. Until a cause and remedy for Colony Collapse Disorder is found, we need to actively work to preserve and bolster our bee populations.

Fight Bee Decline with a Bee Garden

Plant native flowers.

Natives help feed your native bees; they have uniquely co-adapted over long periods of time to fit their needs. Supporting native bees acts as a “bee insurance” in the event we don’t solve the mystery of Colony Collapse Disorder soon. (If you’re in the DE/ PA/ NJ region, this is an excellent guide to our native plants.)

Skip double flowers & hybrids.

Doubles make it harder for bees to access the pollen; hybrids generally don’t produce much pollen for collecting. Basically, stay away from those really fancy, showy flowers.

Allow for nesting and burrowing.

This means leaving part of your yard uncultivated or “untidy.” If you’re not into that, maybe consider this super-pretty Bee Station.

Don’t use chemical pesticides or fertilizers.

Those aren’t good for bees, butterflies, ladybugs, or the birds & small mammals that depend on bugs for food. They’re also not great for small kids or pets, or tracking onto your carpets. Just don’t.

Buy local honey.

Help support local beekeepers in their bee conservation efforts. LocalHarvest has a list of honey suppliers searchable by zip code in their online store, or check your local co-op or farmer’s market. We buy from a very nice man who lives less than a mile away, and our co-op has Pine Barren wildflower honey which I just think is cool. (Possible bonus: some people say that eating local honey will help fight seasonal pollen allergies. Worth a try?)

Make it count.

Take part in the Great Bee Count on July 16th and help researchers determine exactly how our bee populations stand. (Plant sunflowers now so that they’ll be in full bloom at the time of the count!)

Bee the change.
- Ask if you can plant some bee-friendly flowers alongside local roads or on public lands to help create a network of “bee roads.”
- When your plants go to seed in the fall, collect some and scatter them in vacant lots.
- Seed bomb (keep it legal and NATIVE, do NOT seed bomb with non-native species).
- Educate. Teach your kids not to be afraid of bees. Encourage your friends and neighbors to garden for bees.
May is Garden for Wildlife Month! To learn more about gardening for wildlife and turning your yard into a wildlife habitat, check out this post and enter to win a copy of the National Wildlife Federation’s Attracting Birds, Butterflies & Other Backyard Wildlife.

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May 11, 2011
Backyard Wildlife: Pileated Woodpecker

Use the talents you possess—

for the woods would be a very silent place if no birds sang except for the best.

-Henry Van Dyke

When I was a kid my dad would take us hiking. (Since we had no car, this first involved walking 6 miles to the park in question. And then 6 miles back home. Yes, I’m still bitter.)

Every so often, he’d motion for us to stop and be quiet. “Do you hear that?”

And we’d listen for the far-off drumming of a woodpecker.

I never saw a woodpecker until we moved here. But now? I see them every day. Every morning at 10am I take part in a conference call and just outside my bedroom window, two pileated woodpeckers are having a grand ol’ time, chattering and laughing away as they look for a mid-morning snack. I can’t even begin to imagine what my co-workers must think is going on over here.

Daily Woody Woodpecker marathons?

In any case, apparently these woodpeckers weren’t commonly seen around here when I was young, but their numbers have filled out nicely and most alert birdwatchers have a good chance of spying one while strolling through the woods.

A 100% chance if you happen to be strolling by my bedroom window at 10am on a weekday.

Quick Pileated Woodpecker facts:

Crow sized: 16-19″ long

This photo is a female; her “mustache” is black. On a male it would be red.

Woodpeckers have stiff tail feathers to counter-balance their drumming. The tips can puncture paper.

The bones of woodpecker skulls are super-thick and surrounded by super-strong muscles. This is how they avoid massive migraines. (You know you were wondering.)

Their tongues are twice as long as the beak and coated with sticky saliva, as well as equipped with barbs and bristles. Think of it as a bottlebrush scrubbing your trees of insects.

Pileated woodpeckers are long-term monogamous and share egg incubation duties.

If you want to entice visiting woodpeckers to set up shop in your yard, I’ve seen them enjoying dried corn cobs, sunflower seeds, peanuts and those caged suet blocks.

These birds eat the insects from and nest in dead wood, primarily. The worst threat to them as a species is the continued practice of clearing away dead trees.

In spite of the slam I took with my quote there at the open, their call, while not lovely, makes me smile inside every time I hear it.

This is footage of a woodpecker laugh I got from YouTube. I should say that I have got to the point where I can distinguish between our two by their call, so when I listen to this I think, “That’s not quite right.” Much like human voices, I guess. I’ll have to get them on video. They banter back and forth and I always imagine they’re telling jokes and then throwing their head back with laughter.

It’s saying things like that, I suppose, that make me seem endearing to those who know me well. And crazy to those that don’t.

What’s made you smile today?

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May 5, 2011
Wayside Sacrament

Never lose an opportunity to see anything that is beautiful.

It is God’s handwriting— a wayside sacrament.

Welcome it in every fair face, every fair sky, every fair flower.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Looking back through a few year’s blog posts, I can see a touch of seasonal sadness every winter. I write less; I rejoice less; it is as if I develop a thickness to my skin and an edge to my voice.

And every spring, a touch of mania. It starts off slow. I slough off the snake’s skin of the ending season and my new skin is tender, hyper-sensitive. The sun’s rays penetrate and scatter like glitter, magic. I thrill at the sound of bird song and peeping frogs. I look forward to the return of the insects, the bats of summer.

And during these weeks where every day unveils a new species of flower?

I lose my everlovin’ mind.

April comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.
Edna St. Vincent Millay

So, yesterday after putting the kids on the bus, I went out and inventoried our yard and woods.

The violets looked so pretty in their morning dewy finery.

I would photograph one, and then another would catch my eye, and another…

I spent a good 15 minutes army-crawling around, my entire front all wet and muddy, my cheek pressed to the grass as I focused the camera. Rush hour traffic hurling by probably thought I was mental, but I was happy.

After 15 minutes of viewing the world through the macro setting on a camera, you can develop a bit of vertigo. I took a break and stretched out— muddying my backside to match my front, a Rorschach of unkempt contentment— and sort of meditated on the fact that each flower is so lovely. And yet individual, minutely different. It’s mind-blowing when you consider it.

A woodpecker laughed at me, and I whipped my head around to find it, and realized the violets have spread quite a bit since last year. Blanketing the entire yard along the side of our house.

All… those… violets. I’d never get around to documenting every single one, the very thought was crazy. And I was sad to think there was so much beauty that would go unnoticed. Just here, in my yard. Think of all the violets in the nature preserve by our house, where virtually no one goes. Think of all the little beautiful things growing everywhere, miracles that edge through the earth’s surface without prompting, without tending, that are never appreciated.

And then I considered all the beautiful things that are never said or created, out of fear of ridicule or failure. All the beautiful things about people that we miss, all the time. All the beautiful moments that we fail to recognize.

I marveled about how we could spend each day in a state of constant wonder and overwhelming awe, if we took the time to pick out and notice all the beautiful and charming things about the world and the people in it. I am amazed by our human tendency to instead focus on the mundane and unfortunate. Why do we do this to ourselves?

I am not religious, this is as close to a holy experience as I get; but I know a wayside sacrament when I see it.

Cheers. Enjoy your weekend with eyes wide open.

April 29, 2011