This one’s for the bees…

    16th March, 2018 / Art, Gardening, Mixed Media / No Comments

    As most of you know, a lot of my inspiration comes from nature and the garden. That is definitely true of a new small series I am working on related to pollinators.

    I have been fascinated by bees most of my life, despite have an allergic reaction to stings as a kid. I still remember one day when I was playing down by the creek behind my dad’s house and a huge bumblebee landed on my neck. This was when I was allergic and I pretty much froze in fear. As I sat there with this guy wandering around on my neck, it started to tickle. His little feet just pattering away and his fuzzy body just meandering around. I calmed down and just sat by the creek letting this bee walk all over and felt like we became friends. I’m sure in my child’s mind there was some story running around about the magical girl who could talk to bees, or some such thing.

    Skip to today, and our growing problem with the declining bee population. We have a Korean Bee tree in our back yard that has seen better days and will need to be replaced soon. I am hoping to get one more summer out of it, but those pesky lantern flies love it. It blooms at the end of the summer, giving the bees one last source for stocking up for the colder months. And boy do they! When you stand under the tree while it is in bloom, it sounds like you are next to a highway with all of the bees buzzing around!

      

    We also let our garlic chives go to full bloom at the end of the season, so we get a swarm of bees there as well. I think one day last fall I counted at least 10 different species of bees and pollinators hitting up the chive blossoms. And that has led me to my current small series of paintings for pollinators.

    My collage work for the early layers is pulled from an apartment gardening book from the early 70s; beautiful yellowed paper with a grainy, pulpy feel to it. 

    I have started building up the background layers, using light, earthy tones and pulling in some honeycomb. This piece will become my County Collector piece for the Chester County Studio Tour coming up on May 19th and 20th. As I continue to build up layers and work on the foreground details, the garlic chive blossoms with begin to take center stage. 

    I’ll be sharing the finished piece soon and will include it and others from the series in my April Newsletter. Be sure to sign up below to stay in the loop and get more details about the studio tour as we get closer to the event.

    What Really Bugs Me…

    4th September, 2013 / Gardening / No Comments

    The garden has been going well. We are still learning, but have our fall crops in the ground and are planning our wintering constructions.

    This week, I just wanted to go back and share some about our garden visitors. No, I don’t mean our neighbors who have been benefiting from the overly abundant tomato harvest. I mean the buggy visitors.

    Our eggplant got this guy chowing down for a while before we spotted him.

    Tomato hornworm hiding in our eggplant.

    Tomato hornworm hiding in our eggplant.

    I actually found his poop on the ground around the plant and went scouring under all the leaves until we found him. He was about as big as my middle finger (which is pretty much how I felt about him). We were surprised that this was the only one we could find, and that as a Tomato Hornworm, he totally avoided the tomato plants and attacked the eggplant instead. He gave me a really hard time getting him off the leaf, and was put out next to our compost bin. The birds made quick work of him. 🙂

    The other pesky guys we had were mexican bean beetles. Our beans had not been top producers. I think we only got 2 good harvests off of them. So when we found these invading, I just harvested the rest of the beans and pulled the sorry remainders of the plants.

    Mexican bean beetle larvae.

    Mexican bean beetle larvae.

    If the beans had been better producing, I would have taken the time to rid them of these (they are tiny and squish very easily), but as it was, removing the beans helped clear some room for more of the fall plantings.

    Our last bugs to share are the ones I welcome. The honeybees (and bumblebees). We have a Korean Bee Tree in our backyard and towards the end of every summer it becomes a Mecca for the bees in the neighborhood.

    Honeybees in their tree.

    Honeybees in their tree.

    The picture really can’t do justice to the amount of bees we get. The first year we were here I was standing in the back yard and it sounded like a highway had gone in nearby. Looking up into the tree, I nearly freaked out at the swarms of bees in it. After backing away and taking a few deep breaths, I just stood and watched them for a while. It was so amazing to watch these little guys just going about their business hitting as many buds on the tree as they could. It is now my favorite time of the summer and look forward every year to when the tree blossoms and the buzz overtakes our yard.

    What about you? Any interesting bugs in your gardens?