17 July 2009

Artichokes and corn

The artichoke flower is continuing to open up. I took pictures of it yesterday and noticed that a lot of bees were "working" on it.

The artichoke flower buzzing with bees

Then I decided to take a movie:



Walt mentioned last night's brief blast of strong wind on his blog. It blew over one of our stalks of corn. But only one. And it didn't blow down any of the sunflowers.

One cornstalk victim of the wind

One tomato blew over too. Since we have 37 tomato plants growing out there, one less, if it doesn't survive, won't matter too much.

6 comments:

  1. Boy, those are some busy bees (no pun intended). Cool little video.
    Judy

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  2. What a gorgeous artichoke flower! Glad to see the bees are thriving in France. We've got a bee crisis in the U.S.

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  3. Thanks for the little video, oh yes busy bees...The artichoke flower is beautiful, thanks for sharing!

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  4. Looking at that video and noticing the colour of the flower, I am reminded of an incident : one day I went fly-fishing with a group of friends on a river and at one point I was the only one being attacked by a swarm of bees. Couldn't duck into the water because I was all geared up- chest waders and boots. I managed to get out of the water and ran ( as much as I could ) to get away from them. Afterwards, a farmer nearby , told me that the lilac T-shirt I was wearing was a magnet and I was the "flower" :(

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  5. Oh, your video is wonderful!! Thank you so much.

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  6. Ginny: Bees are in crisis all over the world. Domestic honey bees are suffering from sudden colony collapse, probably due to multiple causes. I think that the causes will probably be identified in the nick of time and honey bees will be helped to recover. Wild bumblebees like the one in Ken's picture are threatened by climate change and loss of habitat due to modern agricultural practices. They are cool climate creatures and, except for a couple of species, I think are probably headed for extinction.

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