Jolly Holli Days

 Whilst every day feels like a holiday for me, my other half is not so lucky, slaving away at the coal face week after week. Before the oil refinery where he works shuts down for it's annual spruce up (which takes months and involves lots of overtime where I rarely see him) he's having a last chance holiday and we are going to make the most of this mini Indian Summer we seem to be blessed with. We started days ago with a visit to St Davids where I've been working on a project about the cathedral for a while. I wanted to investigate something so my husband tagged along with me and we made a real day of it, catching an exhibition in the National Parks Visitor Centre of John Piper's drawings and paintings of the' Mountains of Wales' at the same time. In truth, although I am a huge John Piper fan, I found some of the drawings too dark for my liking, preferring to enjoy instead these posters that the Pembrokeshire National Park have produced this summer to celebrate their 60th anniversary.

 There are about 6 of them but these are my particular favourites, and they have been promoted quite heavily locally. They are so reminiscent of those wonderful 1930's holiday posters. After a number of requests, some very large scale versions have been sent out to the troops in Afghanistan as reminders of home.A quick visit to the website on the postcards will display all of them.

The posters are a reminder of that fact that we live in a tourist area so we've been visiting and re-visiting local places as if we were re-accquainting ourselves with them. This afternoon we went westward to Little Haven where I took loads of photos of the geological features. It is a gorgeous place, no more than a 30 minute drive from home, yet I haven't been here for about 8 or 9 years. I think I should be ashamed as I am forever bleating on to people about valuing the landscape and features on their own doorstep. There were a few visitors still around but up on the Point where we were sat, we were alone, basking in the sun and looking out to the islands listening to nothing but the sound of the sea.I was reminded of a quote about Pembrokeshire that I read recently, attributed to a well known local poet named Waldo Williams :

'..... the tiny islands of the sea are a silver web on its edge. Long singing comes there and the waves' dance on the fringes of the land.....'

We're off to the national museum at St Fagans tomorrow where I'm booked into a specialist tour of their unseen textile collections, one of those Heritage Open Days events. We're not sure whether to travel on from there to somewhere else or head back home and keep enjoying what's on our doorstep. As long as this sunshine lasts of course, anywhere looks wonderful. We shall see what we shall see.

Books for Free

About nine months ago whilst visiting the nearest largest town, Carmarthen, I happened to notice a sign saying 'Books for Free' outside an old Allied Carpets showroom. Naturally I had to investigate and found the whole space full of thousands of books on all subjects and I was allowed to take three of them away with me for nothing! Gratis. Free. No catch. Unbeknown to me this shop had been up and running locally for about three months (now a year!) and there are plenty more of them out there all over the UK taking unwanted books from the public, publishers and charity shops rather than let them go to landfill which is their fate unless someone comes along to love them. All the shops are run by the charity Healthy Planet, staffed with volunteers and so far they've saved over 2 million books from landfill. Rather than just take what I fancy, when I see a sign saying I can have a maximum of something, I tend to spend ages making sure I give three books a new home... as if I need any more!

 Whilst in town today I couldn't resist it and so came home with a musty old book on wildlife, a tatty little book about bird's eggs and where to find them (so un-pc in this day and age I know but the illustrations are great) and a truly beautiful find of a children's nature book illustrated by Paxton Chadwick. I have quite a few Puffin Picture Books that he illustrated in the 50's and 60's and in amongst the foxed pages of my final free book are three pull out colour lithographs which are stunning in their detail. What a find. Not the norm of what I pick up there usually but a real treasure.

I have found some fascinating novels in the many boxes inside the store and once I've read them I have returned them in case they are wanted by other readers. I love the whole concept of the place and have recommended it to people over and over again. In truth, I feel I should offer to volunteer but I am afraid it will be the slippery slope with my book collecting habits. The owner of the Allied Carpets showroom has to pay business rates whether he has an occupant or not so having someone using the building makes good sense even though they are on 24 hour notice to move should the building suddenly get rented out. As it's been there a year I cannot see it happening any time soon in this current climate so do take a look at the link to the website and see if there is a Books for Free near you. It really is an easy cause to support and who knows what you could find?

Exercise....who me?

I am exhausted by watching so much of the brilliant Olympic action. I hope it spurs me to get out there and exercise once it's finished but at the moment this is as much as I'd be capable of!

We're having a heatwave... a tropical heatwave....

We've gone from the famine to the feast. Torrential rain has turned into scorchio temperatures. Took a stroll round the garden this afternoon and just looked for the strongest light. Lots of bees, dragonflies and butterflies around . After a barren summer so far, all of a sudden the air is full of Meadow Browns. Have been practicing making up collage templates in Photoshop for ages and then someone told me about PicMonkey. Go to 'create a collage' and five minutes later it's all done for you and all for free. If you don't want to become addicted don't follow the link...... go outside and enjoy the sunshine instead.

Let it bee

 In the way that fate or chance often intervenes in things I had a phone call the day after my last post. It was from the man from the ministry. Well, it was from the bee inspector from DEFRA and he was checking all hives in the area for a disease called American Foul Brood (AFB). Sadly this horrendous affliction has now worked its way this far west but as we had no brood the likelihood of us being targeted was remote. When he heard our tale of woe however he said he'd come the next day to have a look at our hives for us. The swarm we'd picked up on Wednesday had no queen with it and we got the message that the remainder took off later so there was no point in returning to retrieve the rest of them. The bee inspector confirmed all of our hives were queenless and suggested we put all three into one. Now two hives put together will fight it out but apparently three or more thrust together are so shocked and confused they often pull together. It doesn't alter the fact that our bees will ultimately die but it might help stave off the inevitable for a while longer. So now there's only one hive left but the bee inspector is on the look out for another queen or some brood for us whilst he's on his travels but the main season is drawing to a close so we may have to draw a line under it for this year and think long and hard about next year.

We had another call about a swarm last night but this one is in the gutter of a house so my husband passed and gave them a number of someone else. I think he's had enough hassle for this season but he salvaged some of the comb made by the bees from my friend's mum's compost bin to pass back to her. The pristine pieces show the immaculate engineering these fabulous creatures are capable of. Look at those precision made hexagons. Just amazing. The dark spots in the lower piece shows the pollen that the bees had already started to collect and these pieces are bought by companies who want the raw materials to make candles. Somehow I doubt there's enough here to do much with but I could melt it and use it to wax paper or fuse with other materials. If I really had a good idea on how to use it, I just might.

 Whilst we have had some sun at last we've managed to get on with a couple of jobs like clearing the garden and I found this small nest in a sheltered spot, blown down from a large conifer we have. It is dinky and fits all the descriptions of a goldfinches nest. As we had quite a number of fledgelings here this year I am sure this is where it all started for them. I cannot bear to part with these things and have added it to my little collection of garden finds.

Finally, the turn in the weather gave us an opportunity to put out a couple of moth traps this weekend. What a turnaround in numbers. Saturday night's trap yielded 23 different species and 69 moths. It might not sound a lot but it is a massive improvement in numbers for this year. I have recently given a few talks on trapping moths to groups and without fail the memory most people share is that of seeing the 'woolly bear' caterpillar in their youth. When I show them the slide of what it looks like as an adult in the form of the Garden Tiger they are surprised at its beauty, a beauty that has declined by 68% in the last 20 years. Whenever I've trapped them it has always been as single specimens. I have never seen two together so I really make sure I keep it safe and release it the following night to carry on the fight for survival. I am often enamoured of the intricate patterns and subtle colourings of moths and recently came across the blog of an artist who captures their forms quite beautifully. I found the blog via Fiona and it belongs to artist Sarah Gillespie. Do take a look.

Thanks for all the e mails and encouraging comments about the bees this year. It has been a rollercoaster ride and I shall let you know if we're going to do it all again in 2013!

Bee update

'Within that little hive such hints of honey lay as made reality a dream and dreams, reality'

 Emily Dickinson

An inspection on Sunday in our little hives showed that the introduction of the new queens has not been successful. Whilst she eats herself out of her cage for a couple of days to get into the hive, received wisdon says this is breathing space for the occupying bees to get used to her smell thus giving time to make her accepted. If she is not, then the resident bees will undoubtedly kill her.It would seem that neither of our new queens had the essential 'je ne sais quoi' and neither did we capture the queen with the swarm we were blessed with. So, we now have three queenless hives and no new brood. All the bees in situ are bringing in pollen and making honey but all that can happen now is that they will follow their natural lifecycle of six to eight weeks of life and then die. There will be no bees to take their place and the hive will falter and come to an end. We will be left with honey but no bees. A sad state of affairs but we are not alone as this is being reported as a dire year for beekeepers because of the atrocious weather. My husband has never been interested in taking their honey. The average life of a honey bee is six weeks and it takes the lifetime activity of six bees to make one teaspoon of honey! He thinks that for that effort they should keep the rewards of their labour but we will have to extract it if we are left with a supply after the demise of the hive.

The bees from the swarm have also disappeared in numbers, lots dying and being cleared out by the others so when we got a call tonight from my friend Vickie about a potential swarm at her mum Rita's we went over straight away. Not the best photo, but I was secured in the conservatory with Rita at the time, whilst my husband investigated the comings and goings of bees into her compost bin. This is the inside of the lid where they have started to make comb. He gathered up as many as he could into a bucket with a tight fitting lid and we brought a few thousand home with us but a compost bin is not exactly an easy place to extracate bees from so a small amount were left behind. Rita only lives a few miles from us so I drove the short journey home listening to thousands of vocal bees in the container, asking my husband to make sure he had his hands keeping the lid of the bucket closed! We don't know if he's caught the queen so we will be going back in a couple of days after they've settled  to see if we can pick up the surplus. The new bees have now been added to the dwindling hive with the swarm. They may stay and get accepted or all hell could let loose. Who knows? It's just another fascinating chapter in the saga of our bees this summer.

When the day breaks

I came across this ages ago and loved the animation, particularly the way the faces are drawn. See what you think.