To be fair, Dad only cut the plants that were growing near the house and along our walkway to get into the house. He did a good job with the walkway, just trimming back the porterweed and some Spanish Needles so they wouldn't brush you every time you walked through. But my Mom's bougainvillea and one of my Firebush are in a fight for dominance and Dad whacked the Firebush good. The hummingbird had been spotted several times on it so I'm a little irked. I know they'll both grow back but it looks so ugly right now. I generally let him cut things because he's better at shaping them than I am. He's been real sick lately and I think he just got in a hurry. Hopefully, we haven't upset all the pollinators too much. Still lots of blossoms and weeds for them to nectar on. Also, my weak spot if garden planning and I have a tendency not to realize how big things will grow so sometimes Dad has to make the hard decisions.

Jack, the FAA has advised me that your bumblebee is over his weight restriction on pollen cargo.

Oh and I agree, the green bee is the rock star of bees.

The green bee is totally cool. That proboscis is a study in engineering.

Nice bumblers Jack!

Thank you Debra. I was about 7 there.

What a cutie, Ann! :-)

Great photos, J! Amazing how that one bee can fly with such a heavy load of pollen!!

Thanks Robin.

Wow!
Thank you all so much for the thumb and acorn love!
and thank you to the secret too!


What's that saying?
oh yeah

Ann you are such a cute youngin'!

Debra, I am identifying a bit too much with your new signature line

(I may have been cute at one point but nooooooooooo)

Thank you Dirt.

Well, dirt, then my job for the day is done.

In case you guys didn't know, I created a thread dedicated to news articles about bees, butterflies, and birds. I just added an interesting article about how climate change is affecting the length of bee tongues. Since we've been talking about bee tongues lately, I wanted to make sure you guys read it. Check out the thread, and make sure you follow it, here: The thread "Butterflies, Birds, and Bees News Articles" in Gardening for Butterflies, Birds and Bees forum

dirtdorphins said:

Had to click to see the caption as I was thinking WT?
Pretty funny in the reveal!

Thanks, Mellie!

The article about bees is very interesting, Melanie. It's strange to me that the flowers' shape isn't changing but the bees' tongues are getting shorter.

Back to SCButtercups Amistad flower, since its a hybrid it would make sense that there are no bees to specialize in pollinating it... it may be sterile, I don't know? When the bees get the nectar by going through the base of a flower, they will most likely bypass pollination. That could be a problem if it happens in the wild.

Christine, the way I understood the article, one factor is the life span of a plant versus a bee. They studied the last forty years. One generation of bees per year meant forty generations over those years. But the plants lived longer so they didn't "evolve" as quickly as the bees. That's how I interpreted it, anyway. Heck, even forty generations seems pretty fast to evolve a shorter tongue!

I took a picture of some of the bees on Spanish Needles today. I just call these guys "honey bees".

Aha, Melanie. That is a good interpretation.

Spanish needles, I need to look those up... do you have a picture in mass?

Here's a pretty good one Lin put in the database. These things are everywhere in Florida. I used to play "He loves me, he loves me not" with the petals as a child.

Bidens pilosa http://uswildflowers.com/detai...

Me like.

I don't know if any of you are aware of the "People of Walmart" website, but hope you're not on it. I did see a cool Jeep parked across from me today at Walmart and I thought, "I could totally bee friends with this person". Pun absolutely intended.