Ben Park

We all know that bees are good for your garden. However, I’ve always been a bit scared of them. I once had one fly into my ear. I stupidly covered my ear, got a noisy buzz, removed my hand, and the bee flew out.

Incredibly, I’ve never been stung by one, yet I’ll still jump a mile if it flies right at me.

A few months back, at the Bristol Festival of Nature, I went along and saw Brigit Strawbridge (wife of the man with the tremendous moustache, and well-known green advocate) do a presentation about bees, their lives, why their numbers are dwindling, why necto..neonecto..nectoninnoids?..nectin….why pesticides are bad. From this presentation, I learnt that only one of the many types of bees has the ability to produce the right frequency and pollinate tomato plants (maybe I’m lacking that bee, and THAT’s the reason why my tomato plant failed! (A bad workman blames his bees)).

Especially after discovering that lots of species of bees don’t even have the ability to sting, I started looking forward to seeing them in my garden. I’ve noticed they tend to gravitate more towards some plants than others, and so I thought I’d document the top 6 bee-favourite ones, and show them here, in the order that they flowered this year.

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I’ve been wondering for a while how many frogs there are in my tiny pond. There’s definitely a big one, and a little one. Though as the water is so murky, I couldn’t see.

Last night, I went out in the garden and there were a few sat around near the surface, visible. (more…)

I used to do a lot more updates about gardening, but I haven’t done one for a while, as it’s been winter.
It’s definitely spring now, so I’ve been watching Gardener’s World, testing out some iPhone apps and fixing some problems in my garden. (more…)

As I’ve mentioned in other recent posts, I’ve recently acquired a 35mm camera. Actually, I’ve acquired three of them – all the same model. One of them is a Minolta XG-M (and so are the other two).

Here one is, in all her glory.

Although this photo was taken on a mobile phone in bad light.

The cameras were gifted to me in a camera bag. In there, were three identical cameras, a load of lenses (most in cases), a flash unit, several well-used camera cases, what I think is a shutter release cable, and a load of other stuff I didn’t recognise. (more…)

I list photography as an interest, mentally (and sometimes on my CV). Despite this, I don’t really know much about it. I like going somewhere, taking a camera, and taking some pictures, but I have no idea what I’m doing.

I’ve been pondering learning more about photography for a while, but never quite got around to taking a course.
A few years ago, I nearly bought a digital SLR, but then I balked at the cost, lost my nerve, and bought a superzoom bridge camera (Panasonic Lumix FZ8) for half the price.

Not really thinking about what I wanted to take pictures of, I was probably partially won over by the 12x zoom lens. Of course, the first thing I did after I got it, was take pictures of things too far away to see clearly with the naked eye. (more…)