Busy Bee Cafe

It’s a long weekend as today is a bank holiday… but instead of horrible weather, this weekend has been lovely indeed! We spent yesterday and today tidying up the garden. Trust me, the garden was horrible… we didn’t do anything in the garden last year because it was just horrible last year… I just hope we do get a summer this year.

Anyway, after a whole day tidying up the garden yesterday, this morning was a bit more relaxed with Little Bee having her breakfast in her tent.

I noticed that the strawberry plant I bought last year… the year before?… has spread everywhere.

As I dug the strawberry plants up, Little Bee collected snails… as you do.

Most of them are nicely in pots…

… and a boot.

Then it was watering…

And sticking her windmill amongst the forgotten garlic plants.

I think I bought this orchid plant before Little Bee was born. It was blooming when I bought it but then, it has been flowerless. I haven’t been very good to it and only gave it my attention on and off, mostly off. The poor little thing… so I was very impressed when I saw a stalk growing and now this…

Today I helped Little Bee plant her sunflower seeds. Fingers crossed some will grow in a few weeks

More than three years ago, Little Bee came to this world. More than three years ago, Alice and Adam came to visit and Adam gave Little Bee an orange flowered plant. I’m never good at plant names, so it is orange flowered plant.

It went through tough times, it went through loving times, it went through neglect… but it survived.

On the weekend, Little Bee and I cut up the tips of the plant that looked alive, and repotted them in egg shells. Hopefully the roots will grow and they will now thrive.

A couple of weeks ago, Little Bee put a tomato in the shopping basket, even though it was not on my list, I just let it through when we got to the cashier. I kept it on the kitchen worktop as to remind me that I need to use it but every time I cook anything that required tomato, I just grab a tin of chopped tomatoes and forget about the lone tomato on the kitchen worktop.

Then I started to put some jars of jam and spices in front of it and I guess, it was out of sight, out of mind.

Until this weekend, when I was doing my fortnightly kitchen worktop deep clean. There was the tomato. It wasn’t yucky. It wasn’t mouldy. it wasn’t squishy.

It was growing! A little plant has shot through the skin and I can see another trying to push through. Little Bee is very excited about it. I guess in a few weeks, I will repot the plants that are growing out and get Little Bee to look after them

Happy Halloween everyone. Just carved one pumpkin this year for Little Bee to take to her party today where she will be a witch

This is Little Bee’s worm jar.

Over the weekend, I was doing some weeding and digging in the garden. Little Bee loves collecting earthworms when I’m digging in the garden. She would put them in a bowl, bucket or whatever container she could find and move them from one bit of the garden to another.

However, last weekend, we had a keen visitor in the shape of a robin red breast. Little Bee poured some bird food for the robin but while she had her back turned, the robin gobbled up two of her worms. She got quite upset about it and insisted I took the one and only worm left indoors. I plonked some compost on the worm and brought it in.

Last night I found the worm crawling in the kitchen floor and decided to move it into a jar with some compost, egg shells and a bit of spring onion. I told Little Bee that the next time we go into the garden, she could put more worm into the jar.

If you look carefully to the left of the jar next to the leaf, you could see a bit of Little Bee’s little worm.

I was busy getting rid of those pesky weed growing around my garlic plants when Little Bee called out to me saying there’s a white flower!!

I couldn’t remember buying any white flowered plant so I head over to her and saw that it was a flower on one of our strawberry plants

Nice.

Told Little Bee not to pick the flower as it will then turn into a berry.

She said OK and started collecting snails

This is Little Bee’s and my good deed for Good Friday. We (I actually mean ‘I’) were cleaning the front room when we found a bee. I thought she was dead but when I tried to pick her up, she twitched! But it was a weak twitch.

I picked her up, turn her around (she was on her back) and Little Bee and I took her to the kitchen and gave her a drop of honey.

We let her rest and an hour later she was crawling around. Two hours later she looked more energetic and we took her to the front garden. It was now warmer outside and we let her crawl on to a leaf.

With bees dying at the moment, I hope we managed to prolong the life of one.