Backing-Up Bee

I took these pictures a couple of weeks ago and I've been meaning to post them. The Crocosmia "Lucifer" is done blooming now, but as you can see, when the flowers were out the bees were loving it!

They go head-first into the flowers, which seem like a fairly tight fit...

...and then they have to back out.

It's kind of amusing to watch. But as I said, they've now moved on to other flowers. There's plenty still blooming out there: the lavender, the dahlias, the inulas, the agapanthus, the Japanese anemones.

Apologies for being scarce in the blogosphere over the past couple of days. I am buried at work at the moment, trying to gear up for the new school year. We always have a lot of tasks to complete, like removing graduated seniors and their families from the library computer (which takes hours), organizing all the magazines that have arrived over the summer, figuring out displays and getting the physical space ready (making sure the furniture is in the right place, the shelves are organized, etc.). A surprising amount of stuff gets moved around during routine summer maintenance.

This year, some of the library plants have required extra care. We have a Christmas cactus that seems to have come down with a rip-roaring case of mealybugs over the summer, so I brought my rubbing alcohol and Q-tips to work yesterday to solve that problem. Plus I've been trying to complete paperwork relevant to settling my mom's estate. It's always something!

I normally read blogs during downtime at my desk at work, but I've had no downtime. Hopefully that will change soon. By the time kids arrive next week things should be more normal, and hopefully even before that!