outdoors

Thirsty Bees

/ Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment

img_3051When my husband created a pond in the yard, I expected the damselflies, mayflies, midges, diving beetles, and other aquatic insects to show up. I even expected the heron who occasionally drops by to sample the goldfish.

I didn’t necessarily expect the honey bees.

I wasn’t surprised when they showed up, though. What surprised me was the sheer numbers that have shown up this summer. The edge of the pond has been humming for weeks as hundreds of bees jostle for space on the best perches.

Honey bees, like all animals, need water–at least a litre a day per hive. The bees don’t just drink the water; they also use it to dissolve honey that has crystallised, dilute honey for larval food, and to cool the hive on hot days.

When scout bees find a good water source, they mark it with pheromones that tell the other bees it’s a good spot. I reckon by now, the edge of our pond is sticky with pheromones (or at least stinky with them), because there’s always a crowd there.

And after yesterday’s 31°C (88°F) temperatures and 130 kph (81 mph) wind, the pond was extra crowded today.

I’m happy to oblige the bees. I need them to pollinate my vegetables, and they’re not aggressive when they’re foraging away from the hive, in spite of the potentially frightening crowds. The arrangement is a win-win situation for all of us.

Nīkau Palm Gully

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img_3044-smWe spent the weekend on the Banks Peninsula. Saturday we kayaked around Akaroa Harbour all day, and today we hiked out to Nīkau Palm Gully.

The track out to Nīkau Palm Gully is easy walking, as it follows a farm track. It’s pleasant, but not exactly wilderness. The views out over Akaroa Harbour, however, are spectacular. And at the end of the track is the steep drop down into Nīkau Palm Gully.

The gully is a tiny V of land, hemmed in by cliffs, and sporting one of the few remaining remnants of original Banks Peninsula forest.

Most notable among the trees are the palms which give the valley its name. The nīkau palm is the southernmost palm in the world, and New Zealand’s only native palm. It is found in coastal lowland areas, and the Banks Peninsula is as far south as it ranges on this coast. There are nīkau scattered around the Peninsula, but the population of them in Nīkau Palm Gully is impressive.

Nīkau palms are slow-growing. They begin as clusters of leaves growing on the forest floor. It may take forty to fifty years before they begin to form a trunk, and up to two hundred years to reach their maximum height of 10-15 metres. There are individuals of all sizes in Nīkau Palm Gully.

People have been visiting the gully for many years. One tree still bears the mark of a visitor who carved the year–1907–onto its trunk. A pair of amusing (to a reader over 100 years later) letters in the Akaroa Mail in 1909 indicate that the gully was, even then, considered a special place. In the first article, a member of the Beautifying Association writes a scathing indictment of the Akaroa Boating Club for having cut down several palms in the gully to use as decoration for an event. In a subsequent issue of the Akaroa Mail, a member of the Boating Club explains that they only removed a few leaves, not whole trees. The letter writer then goes on to accuse the Beautifying Association of removing entire plants (seedlings) from the gully for their gardens.

Thankfully, the landowners whose farm once encompassed the gully understood its significance, and gifted it to the Department of Conservation (in exchange for one 10-cent stamp presented to them on behalf of Her Majesty the Queen). It is now protected as a scenic reserve, and has been linked to other patches of native vegetation through a number of land covenants on adjacent properties.

 

Greengages

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2017-01-25-14-58-09-smWe don’t often get many greengage plums. Our tree is small, and it sits in a windy location, so many fruits blow down before they are anywhere close to ripe. This year wasn’t too bad–we harvested about three kilos of fruit. Plenty to enjoy.

One of my favourite things to do with summer stone fruits is to make upside down cake. Indeed, I’ve blogged about it three times in the past two years. So today I’ll ignore the cake, and mention the plum, instead.

I didn’t know a lot about greengages before coming to New Zealand, where I found a fair number of people had them growing in their yards.

Greengages are named after Sir William Gage, who imported them to England from France in 1724. The cultivar he imported had another name, but apparently the tag was lost in transit (These were the days before anyone considered biosecurity…Importing a strange plant? Whatever). They were popular in America in the 1700s, but fell out of favour in the 1800s.

According to a 2004 article in the New York Times, there’s good reason greengages fell out of favour. The trees take longer to mature than other plums, they fruit erratically (I thought it was just our tree), the ripe fruit is fragile, and they’re prone to cracking and rotting on the tree. Not exactly an easy plum for commercial production.

But the greengage is considered one of the finest plums for flavour. Grown commercially, it fetches a high price. According to the New York Times article, in 2004 fewer than 100 greengage trees were harvested commercially in the United States. They are more common in Europe and New Zealand. New Zealand exports a small quantity of greengages to the US each year, where they are sold in specialty markets.

So I feel much better about my 3 kilo harvest of greengages. They are wonderful, and if they’re a bit finicky to grow? Well, that just makes them all the more special when we have a good year.

Celebrate January

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2017-01-24-15-13-32-smThe golden month is nearly over. January is the sweet spot of the year.

The Christmas frenzy is over. The kids are o vacation. much of the rest of the population goes on holiday too.

Even I get a break. By January, the plants in the garden are large enough to suppress weeds, so there’s little weeding to be done. Te early crops are winding down and the summer crops are ramping up. Full-scale bottling (canning) and dehydrating will come later. January is mostly a time to enjoy the garden’s summer bounty.

There is work to do, of course. Peas, pickling cucumbers, and green beans all peak in January, and they need to be processed. But they are relatively quick and easy crops to preserve.

Along with the garden respite usually comes sunny summer weather. We can go camping and backpacking, and take trips to the beach. January is a month of sand, sun and effortless meals.

February will come, with school, work, and a mountain of vegetables to process. The nationwide party mindset will end, and we’ll all settle in for another year at the grindstone.

But there’s still a week left. Enough time for a bit more fun…

Love, Life, and Fart Jokes

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Thank you to the World Busker’s Festival for allowing me to forget for a few hours what was happening in my homeland today. The fart jokes, the sexual innuendo (which my son now gets…oh dear), and lots of flaming torches being juggled at altitude were exactly what I needed.

It reminded me that daily life will go on these next four years. What that daily life looks like, and how it will change remains to be seen. The possibilities fill me with anxiety.

But there will also be love, life, and fart jokes. I, for one, will be clinging to those, and sharing as much of all three as I can, to help us all through what promises to be a rocky four years.

So, here’s your light-hearted interlude for today:

What do you call a person who never farts in public?

A private tutor.

Postcard From New Zealand

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2016-01-22 14.08.29 smWe spent the day yesterday at the beach (along with the entire population of Canterbury and half a million tourists, judging by the crowds). It was a stellar beach day–hot and sunny. Perhaps a bit too windy at times, but heat and wind are almost inseparable here, so we just go with it. We managed to slip away from the crowds for a while by clambering over the rocks to Little Okains Bay. The water was cold, the sand was hot, the rock pools teemed with cool creatures, and the scenery was stunning, as usual.

The entire day was a full-colour glossy tourism ad for New Zealand. And it was just one of many similar days we’ve experienced recently.

I’m not saying that every day is a vacation–I put in 11-hour workdays (painstaking editing) all last week, and I pull a lot of weeds and have to clean the house and the chicken coop every week–but New Zealand does vacationing well.

All day, I kept coming back to one, glorious, humbling, beautiful thought–this is my home. My family and I are so blessed to have been welcomed into this amazing country. A place where we can stand on the top of a mountain one weekend, and swim in the ocean the next weekend. A place where Christmas/summer vacation lingers through the entire month of January; even once many people are back at work, the vacation mindset remains. A place that embraces a weird and wonderful mix of people from all over the world.

New Zealand has its problems–no human society doesn’t–but I feel honoured to be allowed to make my home here in such an incredibly beautiful place among such incredibly beautiful people.

So you all my Kiwi readers–thank you.

And to all my overseas readers–having a great time. Wish you were here.

Noddy’s Flycap

/ Robinne Weiss / 7 Comments

img_2955-cropI was working in the garden this morning, and came across this stunning mushroom in the middle of the broad beans.

My first reaction was, “Oh, my! Fairies must have visited the garden.” I wondered if nature was trying to tell me I needed a little whimsy among the vegetables. I began to consider the possibilities. A few fanciful carvings on my trellises? Gargoyles atop the fence posts?

My next reaction was, “I’ve got to show this to my husband.” (He researches mycorrhizal fungi, and this looked to me a bit like an Amanita, which are usually mycorrhizal). He saw it, and said, “Oh!…Oh!…that’s a…no, wait…I won’t say anything until I’m sure…this could be important.”

He did some research and confirmed the mushroom as Noddy’s flycap–Amanita sp. 2–an unusual fungus recorded only from New Zealand, but thought to be introduced, as it is generally found among non-native vegetation. It has never been recorded this far south, and we’ve never seen it on our property before.

Geoff Ridley has written a nice blog post about this fungus and its odd distribution and mysterious origin.

And so, perhaps nature was, instead, telling me to keep my eyes open for scientific wonders, even in my own back yard.

And then, I learned that Noddy’s flycap is named for the Enid Blyton character, Noddy (and his pointy hat).

And at this point, the symbolism of this strange fungus in my garden got really weird. A whimsical-looking fungus of unknown origin, and not known to be present here, named after a character in a middle grade novel?

The message was loud and clear–this fungus has to show up in my next book. Excuse me while I go scribble down some ideas…

No More Grammar

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img_2951I’ve spent the last three days—11 hours each day—editing. I have no brains left to write a blog—they have all leaked out, stabbed by excessive punctuation, and strangled by curly quotes. If I see another comma, I will scream. I’ve had my fill of cut-and-paste errors. No dependent clauses can depend upon me this evening.

Instead, I will head to the garden, or to the piano. I’ll ignore infinitives, and banish adverbs. I will say whatever I please, and not worry about sentence fragments. Sentences without verb. Subject. Object.

  1. Do. Not. Care.

The English language can take a holiday this evening. Tell the Oxford Style Manual to stay home. I won’t answer the door. Come back tomorrow.

 

Get Outside—See Cool Stuff

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The swarm--apologies for the image quality; I'm allergic to bee stings.

The swarm–apologies for the image quality; I’m allergic to bee stings.

I’m trying to make myself go out for a walk at lunchtime every day. I’ll admit that I can be a bit of a slave driver when I’m working, and I don’t always manage it. I have a tendency to simply work through lunch, and then suddenly discover it’s late afternoon.

In truth, the walks available to me from my front door aren’t necessarily all that inspiring—endless agricultural fields in every direction.

But you can’t experience anything if you don’t first go out. Yesterday, I took the most boring of the boring walks from my house—the one that doesn’t offer so much as a mailbox for the first kilometre. Don’t ask why I chose that way—maybe I wanted to clear my mind, as I’d been doing intense editing all morning.

On this most boring of walks, I happened to see something awesome—a honey bee swarm.

We are blessed with many nearby apiaries, and I always have a plentiful supply of bees to pollinate my garden vegetables, but even so, it’s unusual to spot a swarm. This one was hanging in a drooping mass off the neighbour’s fence.

Bees swarm to create a new colony. It’s usually the old queen who leaves her hive with a large portion of the workers. A new queen will hatch in her absence and take over the old hive.

The swarming bees leave the hive and gather nearby while scout bees search for a new hive location. This is what I saw—the resting swarm. It likely flew away to a new home within a few hours. Where those bees are now, I don’t know, but I hope they found a nice place nearby from which to visit my garden.

So, my most boring walk was amazing. That reminds me, I still haven’t gotten out for a walk today. Time to step away from the desk and get outside. Who knows what I might see?