Gardening Leave

SOLITARY BEES. (Apidoe.)
1, Osmia; 2, Anthidium; 3, Panurgus; 4, Megachile.


I’ve just had an extended weekend back in Bristol. My husband (known on this blog as The Director) is a very dedicated naturalist so when the blackbirds wake us up with a blast of new season competitive singing at four in the morning his response is to get up and stand outside the front door in his pants with recording equipment. My role in this enterprise is to defrost the man-sized ice block that rolls back into bed an hour later.

I miss not having a garden when I’m in London and I love sitting outside with my coffee. However, our garden mustn’t be disturbed because our house houses a production company that makes natural history films and it’s quite handy to have a film set outside the back door. I am forbidden from doing any digging or planting apart from a very small area the size of a child’s sand box right at the end where I am allowed to plant a bit of salad (for the caterpillars).

One community that is being groomed for greatness in the garden is a colony* of solitary bees that started making burrows in our lawn a few years ago. Year on year the number and variety of species has increased and as these creatures arrive in ever greater numbers so do gangs of reprobate insects; parasitic bees and wasps coming round to steal the bee holes and lay eggs on the bee larva, a whole soap opera of naughtiness and cheating is going on down there.

Once the bees start their activity no sitting on the lawn is allowed in case the bees get a bit cross waiting to get in or out of their holes so The Director and I teeter together with our morning coffee on a bit of wobbly wall by the edge of my sand box.


*Strictly speaking we shouldn’t say 'colony' the correct word is aggregation, none of the bees are related, they just like living around each other in dense populations.

Dancing and sausages

21st july
The village fete is four days of fun. After the sausage meal on Friday night there's a disco at the Salle which I didn’t attend but heard quite well through my shuttered windows. Last night I witnessed my first bal-musette - old time dancing on a packed dance floor where pensioners execute perfect polkas, waltzes and foxtrots. I don’t know how to do these dances and made many men regret asking me to dance because I'm not only taller than most of them, but I’m also clumsy and have no sense of rhythmn.

Tonight for the finale there will be a bigger, better bal-musette, accompanied by a bigger, better sausage and pulse-based meal.

There is a price to pay for all this fun. Arriving at the Salle des fetes to help clear up after last night's festivities I noticed that the volume of cars coming, going and parking has squashed Bee City flat.

Bee City

17th July
I've been searching for filming locations, just wandering around locally on foot or bike initially. A few yards away from our place is the Salle des Fetes and I notice at the sandy edge of the car park there are lots of mini volcanoes. Furry bee heads emerge now and again. I watch for a while to see who else lives nearby, there's loads of activity, an insect metropolis.

I'm chatting up the neighbours as much as possible, I'm quite keen to make our activities known in the area as I'm hoping to get help/permission to film on their land. There is a woodyard nearby with piles of rotting planks and tree stumps strewn over a large area. This must be home to all kinds of animals, among them woodlice which will be quite important for us. I ask the yard owner if there are a lot of woodlice around. He looks at me blankly, I lift a scrap of wood off the ground and show him one, he still looks at me blankly, he tells me that he has no idea what this creature is.