I spent much of the day outside, in pretty nippy temperatures I have to say, tidying the rose bed in the top garden and pruning the roses. Every now and then though, I’d stop work and wander around with the camera for a while, in the hope of finding some nice insects – or, let’s be completely honest, in the hope of finding Hairy-footed Flower Bees, plus whatever lesser creatures might happen to be around. And happily, despite the low-teens temperature and the fact that it was only intermittently sunny, there were a couple of Plumpies using the pulmonaria in the front garden and at least three patrolling the sweet violets out back. I’m posting this one drinking from the pulmonaria because it’s a view that never fails to charm me – I always think it looks as if the bee is peering into the depths of the flower, looking for something it’s mislaid.
In less good news, my wonderful Stihl power secateurs suffered a war wound during today’s gardening session, when I failed to line them up properly on the rose stem I was pruning, and caught the coated wire obelisk supporting the rose in the cut. This visibly damaged the obelisk, which I don’t much care about, but also bent a little section at the end of the secateur blade, which upset me quite a lot. R was quite relaxed about it – probably because he’d been nowhere near the incident, so we both knew that I only had myself to blame – and pointed out that the secateurs still work perfectly well provided that I don’t try to cut with that small section of blade. But I’m prissy about keeping nice things nice, so I’m very cross with myself, which has put a bit of a dampener on my springy spirits.
R: L2, C6, D2.
