Thursday 22 April 2021

Solitary Bees, Maple flowers and a lovely garden

I had an outdoor meeting yesterday at Magdalen Community Garden, a lovely little garden hidden away behind housing. It's a new garden, only five years old, but is already thriving, with fruit trees, lots of poly-tunnels / raised beds for growing vegetables and plenty of seating

It also has a lovely shed 

You can find out more about the Magdelene Community Garden on the Edible Estates website here. It's well worth watching the video on that page (made before lockdown).

We were planning the workshops I'll be involved in as part of the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival (you can read more in my blogpost of a few days ago here). One of the workshops will take place in the garden itself, which offers plenty of space for socially distanced creative writing activities! 

On a nearby street, I noticed lots of chocolate mining bees (Andrena scotica) flying around a west facing wall and in and out of holes in the wall. There is obviously a thriving colony of these lovely bees here and they were happy to be photographed as they basked in the sun

Also on a nearby street, I found this lovely Norway maple tree in full bloom, with flowers hanging low enough for me to easily take this photo 

You can see more Edinburgh trees in bloom in yesterday's post.






5 comments:

Sallie (FullTime-Life) said...

Chocolate mining bees? They are lovely and if only their name described their actions, I would happily follow one around for a while! The garden is lovely and seems a perfect place to hold your workshop.

eileeninmd said...

Hello,

The Community Garden looks very nice, I would like to have some raised garden beds.
I have to go and check out your Arts Festival post. It is great to see the bees, they need to stay happy. The Norway Maple tree is lovely. Take care, enjoy your day!

Bill said...

Suggested by yesterday's post:

young lovers
it's not just the cherry trees
that are in bloom

Spring blessings!

Crafty Green Poet said...

Hi Sallie, sadly there is no evidence that chocolate mining bees actually mine chocolate....

Eileen - the bees do need to stay happy and these looked like very happy bees

Bill - thanks for sharing your ku, lovely words

RG said...

I Like those community gardens .. more and more catching on around here and so many folks like the produce! Boy oh boy we have one of those maples with so much bloom - more than I ever recall!!!