Tag: bees

#259 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn YardeningLeave a comment

I belong to a great bookgroup. Just the right mix of 10 people with wide and interesting reading habits. Absolutely we talk about the book we have all read together each month hi and books that we have read independently. But we also talk about anything else that the books have inspired. Today a bookish t-shirt found a new home.

But most significantly a new word revealed itself at book club today. Viridescent !! Meaning greenish or becoming green. After the wet weeks we’ve had, Viridescent is just about all we can produce in the yard.

Then Sunday arrived with some sunshine which added a bit of colour to the viridescence. Not too much of course.

And then this morning there was a burst of colour.

As daylight established itself it wasnt just me excited to see the flowers of summer. The Bee’s arrived and were immediately busy.

Now if I were a bee I would be all over the gorgeous yellow seed pod, but I suppose he knows his business of collecting pollen better than me . Just one last blooming development, the really fancy poppy revealed its own fondant fancy seed pod, this time it is a subtle lime.

The bees, of course, are elsewhere, inside these lovely petals.

Viridescent you are so yesterday. The yard is blooming.

#150 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn SpringLeave a comment

A late published blog because the early morning ran away with me and then serendipity took me in a different direction. I am 10 days into a virus that is not Covid. Every day the test(s) come back negative. It is however quite the worst cold I have ever had and it has robbed me of energy, lung and brain function and I have absolutely no sense of taste and smell. The picture above exactly conjours up my eating and drinking life currently. It is the inside of a cherry and almond puff. I know that on my tongue there should be the sweet blend of pastry, lemon, cherry and almond all in separate sharp clarity. As depicted, luckily, by the sharp red and yellow colours in the centre of the picture.

What could I actually taste? Maybe a sensation of staleness and indistinct wooliness as depicted by the blurry edges of the pastry. What a disappintment!

Taste and smell blunted I set off on a car journey and listened to the radio. All well and good you might think but clearly without taste and smell some other senses are upping their game. Despite having seen the news reports of the return of two Iranian hostages I was quite unprepared for the audio file of the families reunions, something done in private and away from official cameras.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10622561/Nazanin-Zaghari-Ratcliffes-daughter-slept-reunited-parents.html#v-6031229203077808800

Only the audiofile reveals the tears of the hostages and their families as they are reunited. I became a weepy, damp, mess and pulled over into a layby to sort myself out and continue to drive safely. The layby was gloriously filled with roadside daffodils. They were my salvation.

Definately something to lift the spirits and stop some random in-car blubbing. But serendipity stepped in to make the morning even more special. A sleepy newly emerged bee.

Who scrambled onto the edge of a daffodil and promptly fell asleep in the sun.

Which was just what I needed to sort myself out and drive on. An unexpected start to a very ordinary day.

Pandemic Pondering #448

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Home Towns1 Comment

Foggy/Sea Mist morning is my excuse for late blogging, that and extreme domestic admin.

The sea mist is not the scenic kind. Thankfully blooms and bee bottoms have saved me from an empty space where a blog should be.

Actually as I write this the sun has burnt off most of the non-scenic mist but the bee bottoms have fully engaged me now. I even managed to gather a half decent bee in-flight picture.

Bees in the bright pink flowers are fidgety creatures. Resting only for a second or so it is hard to get a good bee bottom shot.

I’m unsure why this should be the pollen supplies look lush and plentiful.

Hugo and Lola required more dog biscuits today. The pet shop is attatched to a garden centre and more busy bees posed, this time no bottom shots!

There we are a late blog featuring a lot of bees, no non scenic sea mist and just because I can, a lovely baby fern leaf.

Pandemic Pondering #133

On By theoldmortuary.designIn SerendipityLeave a comment

Some days, pondering takes place beyond the blog.
This morning I was pondering or puzzling over a conundrum of my own making. Prosecco was involved.
I’m running the social media presence of an art group throughout August.At an informal planning meeting, I may have drunk a little prosseco.
At the meeting we were planning the August social media activity. I am not enlivened by prompts.In the art group world, prompts can be considered- helpful, inspiring, bonding, stimulating. I find them the reverse, Stifling, controlling, enervating .

Prosecco led me to be particularly blunt about prompts. Understandably, after I left, the others ignored me and went on to plan prompts.

Suddenly this morning I realised the prompt hater (me) would be managing a month of prompt related posts.

Not awkward at all.

Luckily I caught a programme on the radio. Serendipity had struck. the dogs are big fans of BBC Radio 4.
I caught them engrossed, listening to a woman talking about being creative.

In half an hour she cured my awkwardness over prompts. She is someone who embraces and creates from uncertainty.

I completely reccomend sitting down and listening,

30 minutes of down time listening to someone so much better than me at expressing a love of serendipity, or uncertainty and how it can be a positive thing

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000l7zh

More importantly, while listening to Caoilinn a lovely way of coping with prompts has revealed itself. I will embrace my awkward and consider the unwanted structure of daily prompts as my uncertainty and some days even use the prompt to inform and structure the blog.

These two morning events and the bees on the Artichokes are a fine example of a blog falling, unexpectedly into my head and then into the blog world.

Pandemic Pondering #119

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Gardens and gardening, Serendipity2 Comments

The Saturday newspaper runs a Wordplay section every week. One part is a quiz to guess the meaning of unusual words. I don’t catch it every week and it doesn’t always spark my inner word- nerd. This week, though, a lovely word popped up.Shikantaza is one of those words, a firework of a word; it could go off in any direction. Street Food, the art of folding tree branches into mysterious shapes, a high fashion garment, the possibilities are endless.What it is, though, is Zen Meditation involving sitting and thinking. I do a lot of sitting and thinking , often adopting other positions too. Already I’m anxious to find the word for Zen Meditation while leaning on a wall. Thinking is one of my favourite activities. I also like to meditate which is the opposite of thinking.I’m not particularly good at static meditation, intrusive thoughts are the fuel of Ponderings why would I want to banish them?I’m more inclined to meditate when doing onerous tasks or when doing something that is regular and repetitive.
This morning I did a very familiar walk that, recently, has been very conducive to a snippet of meditation and sometimes if a bench can be found some Shikantaza.

Today there were loads of people about, quiet contemplation, of any sort, was not possible.It was very easy though to concentrate on the buzz of busy bees on spiky plants and feel wistful about the quieter days of lockdown.

Busy bees are buzzing in these next three pictures but unlike this singular chap above they did not stop to pose.

Too many humans, and not enough busy bees, I suspect, are a major part of the problem expressed on this embellished piece of slate, found later in my day.I found this pebble hiding on the edge of a field, while walking again, Another thing to contemplate. The message is compelling after such a pretty walk this morning.

It’s also been a day of thinking; time to sit down and turn it into Shikantaza.