On 25/2/07 17:19, in article , "Carol
Hague" wrote:

Sacha wrote:

On 24/2/07 21:35, in article , "Carol
Hague" wrote:

My own honey bees attacked me when someone else was manipulating the hive
and I wasn't wearing the proper gear. I received so many stings that from
being a bit resistant to them I've gone to 'don't get stung - ever'.

Ouch! Poor you!

But
while I do avoid weeding certain flower borders when the bees are really
busy, on the whole I find the old thing of 'leave them alone and they'll
leave you alone' does work with them.

I suppose if a bee wants to sting you it has to be sure it's worth it,
since it's going to die if it does - wasps can afford to be the
aggressive little toerags they are because they don't have the same
constrant.

With bees, it seems to be a matter of self-sacrifice if they attack as mine
did, because obviously they thought someone was attacking their hive. I
remember once watching them after a wasp had got into the hive, searching
for honey to steal. Several bees mobbed it, stinging it to death and of
course, themselves dying in the process. It might be the same trigger when
an individual beer stings someone weeding a flower bed, perhaps the 'enemy'
reaction doesn't rely on numbers!

snip

My memory comes from the same stock, obviously! It does help to know where
people are when it comes to swapping gardening experiences. Friends of ours
have just moved to Matlock where his mother came from originally. Now you
mention that wossname that made small bits of earth for the garden, I
remember my grandfather had one of those. What were they FOR, I now ask
myself? To grade soil? To add compost and soil together? And do you
*ever* see anyone use one now? No, IME. I'm assuming that back in those
days before proprietary compost, they were used to make ordinary garden soil
very fine for the growing of seeds and seedlings.

I've actually used one myself not that long ago - in my last garden we
built some raised beds for growing veg in and couldn't afford huge
amounts of compost from the garden centre so we used the riddle (hurray,
I remembered!) to sieve garden soil and compost together to fill them.

We didn't really *need* to I suppose but it made planting much easier.

That must be what Grandpa was doing but that would be in my childhood when I
don't think you could buy compost in nice tidy plastic bags.


snip
I like ponds, but this one takes up a disproportionate amount of the
garden. It's staying though, cos I'm a total softy and couldn't bear to
evict the fish and their umpty dozen water snail pals.

Could you/would you alter the size of the pond, though?

I don't think so - not in the foreseeable future at least. It's such a
huge unwieldy thing that it would be a major project to undertake any
alterations. Maybe when I get the rest of the garden sorted....

You'll probably have got fond of it by then, or will have tkane u p breeding
koi. ;-)
snip

And, from reading allotment holders here, they are disappearing fast, too,
in some areas?

This particular one seems to be going strong still, touch wood, but you
do hear tales of woe from elsewhere. I'm looking forward to seeing the
Gardener's World programme about allotments on Friday.

Hope yours flourishes and produces good crops this year!

--
Sacha
http://www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
http://www.discoverdartmoor.co.uk/
(remove weeds from address)