On the difficulties of photographing bees

The ceanothus in our garden is in full bloom and the bees are in paradise, you can hear them buzzing as they nimbly work from flower to flower.  Looking closer you can see that their pollen baskets are bright yellow and full, so full sometimes that I wonder how they can still fly.  But while the bees are great fun to watch, they are most difficult to photograph, being small and fast moving.  My camera is good, but not state of the art, so it struggles to focus fast enough and accurately enough.


Despite being a failure at its main aim, I rather like this photograph as it shows the problem, the bee appears as a sunlit blur in the centre of the picture, while the camera has focussed on the flowers.



These are probably my best pictures of the lot.  I think I shall have to send my sister out there with her big camera while I read up in the manual of my camera to see if there is anything I can change in the settings to make photographing these amazing creatures easier.



Then my next challenge will be learning to identify the different varieties, I find that a real struggle.

Spring

Although today has been distinctly wintry on the whole we are surrounded by signs of spring.  Our pond was a ferment of frogs last week, at one point we counted twelve in there, which was quite something as it is not a large pond, only just over a metre long at most.  They have mostly disappeared now, leaving the pond full of frog-spawn.  I love spring, watching the cycle of life getting started again, plants appearing, first as tiny green spikes, then emerging into their full identity, small crocuses or full sized daffodils towering higher and higher.  Watching the buds on the trees, there all winter as tiny promises of the renewal to come, slowly swelling and breaking and the bees emerge from their winter quarters and begin to visit from flower to flower.



This has been a good weekend for spring things, despite today's weather, yesterday there were times of gorgeous blue skies and bright, warm sunshine cutting through the crisp breeze.  On my way out I noticed among the many crocuses that have naturalised and are spreading across the front garden most efficiently, one which is striped in purple and white, something I never knew crocuses could do.  On my way home, after dawdling to listen to a blackbird and watch some great tits in the trees - one of them flew close enough past my head that I heard its wing flutter in flight, the first time I have heard that this year - I discovered that crocuses seem to close for the night.  All the flowers had shut in the time I had been out.



We have lots of narcissi in the back garden as well as more crocuses, the occasional tulip, a few hyacinths and glorious clumps of primroses.  I adore the "proper" pale yellow primroses, so sunshiny with heart-shaped petals.  Their cousins the cowslips are beginning to flower too.  Continuing the yellow theme we have sighted a yellow butterfly at the bottom of the garden, probably a brimstone I think.



Everywhere is new life and this morning's great excitement was the news that we once again had two robins, our robin has been doing some valiant singing recently hoping to attract a mate.  There were two robins in the garden in January but it was probably a bit too early for them to be together and one left again.  So we have high hopes of baby robins come the summer.  However, there have not been as many goldfinches around lately, I hope the robin's aggression has not scared them off.



My knitting is keeping with the spring theme too as I am now on the top shaping of the Peerie Flooers hat by Kate Davies, the decrease sections do take some concentration and I have been back re-knitting most rows at least once.  But the finished result is looking beautiful and most spring-like, the Rowan Fine Tweed yarn is gorgeous, with a wonderful lustre.  Hopefully it will be finished soon and my head will match the spring around me.

Unfurling

A couple of days ago I took this photograph of some of the roses in the garden, attracted by the beauty of the tightly furled buds, their creamy yellow tinged with pink.



Yesterday afternoon I photographed the same roses again, as the roses gradually unfurled and the blush of pink began to fade.



And this morning they have progressed further still to a mass of flowers.  I am not greatly enamoured of the roses one gets in vases, with small flowers on long straight stems, but I adore roses in a garden, growing in a glorious profusion of blooms.



Despite the lack of sunshine the bees are having a good time, carefully climbing in and out of the snapdragons , whose nectar must be good for the amount of effort involved in parting the "mouth" of the flower and climbing in and then out again and rifling through the heavy bloom of a many petalled poppy.  Many of them are bumbling around the hebe hedge at the front in drunken delight.

The garden and its inhabitants are such a source of delight and refreshment, even on a comparatively cold, grey day as today.  Rest assured I am still knitting, gearing up for the current baby boom, I have finished one baby vest and started yesterday on another and have a fresh pair of bootees on the go to fill in odd moments.