Some chores and a few flowers

I have been a bit preoccupied over the last few days, and due to the cool cloudy weather Nature has been a bit slow.  Hence no blogposts.  Sunday 11 March however was a brilliant day so time to get out and do some chores before looking for interesting bugs around the garden.

The key chore was tidying up in the veg garden where a few days of light frosts (down to about -1.5C) have sorted out the tomatoes and cucurbits.

 Also the asparagus ferns were going over so time to be cut down.  All this material is a bit full of sclerenchyma and would thus take an eternity to break down if just composted.  So it is piled in a heap....

 .. and the village idiot wields a lawn mower in its general direction.

Sometimes I ever remembered to fit the catcher to the mower, making it a lot easier to transfer the mashed material to the compost heap.

We have recently been visited by the tree surgeons, trimming under the power lines.  Apart from ensuring the continued supply of electricity (and reduced chance of bush fires starting) this generates a few trailer  loads of firewood.   I have started stacking this stuff, which won't be burnable this Winter, on the outside of an old rainwater tank.  It makes quite a fancy image.

 The frosts have also caused most of the leaves to come off our Pistachio tree.

 The reason I was looking for insects was that I had seen a native bee (I think) with a red abdomen recently.  Of course it vanished before I got the camera to hand but I thought it might be back.  This Callistemon (or Melaleuca or Banksia or Squarrox or whatever the taxonomists have decided  to call them this week) is the only one (of about 20 around the place) that has got confused enough to flower.

 The only insects around were honey bees.  They were also on the Buddleia.

 Salvias are attractive, whether thin and purple ...

 .. or plumper and pink.

Other entities also had jobs to do.  In this black and white case it was being in charge of sprint training for the local lizzids.