Just returned from Denver (Cherry Creek Smash Art Festival) yesterday. Fun, successful trip with some great response to the art. So…I didn’t make any time to shoot yesterday. Here’s one from last week. Nice shot of a bumble’s face on the oregano. You can clearly see the three eyes on the top of the head. Really like the greens with the pinks with the yellow/gold intrusion.
Cooling off – 51 degrees this morning and that’s a welcome relief. Looks like 90s for a while yet, but the asters are starting. Brace yourself!
…keeps them coming back! Here’s a brown-belted bumble on it. Pollen all over him (I think it’s a drone) and a rare shot of bumbleneck. Those necks fascinate me. Surely a product of millions of years of selection, but they look so strange…and the color – every one I’ve seen is white-ish. And so small for the sizes of the head and abdomen it seems. So interesting to me.
Didn’t shoot on Wednesday at all for some reason. The day got away from me. So here’s one from Tuesday on the ornamental oregano. Honeybee and a brown-belted bumble. The size difference is amazing. Rare to get focus on both bees. I’ve got a number of shots that have multiple bees – four or five, even – but the focus just doesn’t work. Point is, though, that they just swarm this one. It’s a neat little bush-like thing that seems to tolerate intermittent watering. Get one if you love the pollinators.
For some reason I thought this was thyme. So I was gonna make a funny, “from thyme to thyme” as the title. Really fell flat when it turned out to be an ornamental oregano. That said, it’s in full bee-bloom right now. Almost riotous. And it’s a neat plant, despite the light in the picture. Seems to want to spread some – lots of elbows thrown.
Parenthetically, I’ve coined a term for our gardens here. Apparently, there are lots of garden styles: formal, rock, cottage, prairie, traditional, and so on. Tons, depending on the list you look at. But ours here are called MMAyhem gardens. Use your imagination…and go back to the “throwing elbows” comment. They’re just remarkable (I think we’ve got something like fifteen or eighteen discrete gardens here, depending on how one counts) and I do them and you a disservice by only posting single blooms. Need to post some reference shots to do them justice.
Oh, the bee is a Brown-belted Bumble (Bombus griseocollis) and it was sure having a good time on the oregano. And not sharing very well with others of its kind (and not of its kind). Fun to watch. Too many words. Enjoy the pic!
