You Grow Girl™

I am getting a first-rate education in the wide world of clematis from my visits to Barry’s garden. So far, I seem to lean towards the bell-shaped flowers and this may be my very favourite yet. It’s velvety!

I recently happened on this year-old photo taken on a spring 2008 bike ride to The Leslie Spit. Looking back, it seems I take a lot of photos of tansy there. They’re one of those plants that are sorely overlooked as wasteland weeds but they have such good bones and are often the home of an interesting assortment of critters, at times an ecosystem in themselves.

I stepped outside onto the roof the other day and discovered a remarkably iridescent blue bee hanging out on the ‘Centennial’ kumquat tree. At first I thought it might be one of the 2000 bees in The Halictidae Family. But it’s so blue, turquoise even! Can they be blue as well as shades of green?

Then I started to wonder if it is a bee at all. I’m still not very good about discerning a hornet from a bee. Or perhaps it’s an alien. They’re already here among us, just very tiny. This perspective is most likely reinforced by watching Alien and Aliens back-to-back recently.

I’ve looked around online and in the insect books on my shelf searching for identification but have come up short. I’ve never seen anything like it!

Minutes later a large dragonfly hovered around me. Some days my garden in the sky is more wild kingdom than the one on the ground.

I caught this hoverfly perched on a vibrant spiderwort just after a rainstorm the other day. Hoverflies are one of the garden good guys. The larvae of many species feed on aphids. More hoverflies!