Sylvus' Garden---Bee Hotel

The Bee Hotel

Or, My Efforts at Sort-Of Organic Gardening

In addition to hand picking, proprietary soap sprays, compost tea, (and prayer of a very irreverent kind: ``please, birdies, come and eat my slugs'') I do use copper and sulpher sprays, and I'm not really clear how exactly they fit in the definition of organic gardening.

And when these bees started hanging out my zinnias, I decided they'd have to live with mildew, because the recommended time for spraying, early in the morning, was always the time the bees were asleep. I was really charmed by having these little black and yellow fuzzy occupants nesting in my blossoms like little fairies.

Detroit has many problems, but it has some nice features too---the Detroit Institute of Arts and their wonderful red velvet and gilt auditorium, where they show alternative and foreign film every weekend, the Detroit Zoo, easy freeway access to much of the city, and...a lack of lawn madness.

The up side to the abandoned, burnt-out, and plowed under housing are trees that have had time to get large, fields of wildflowers, and lawns composed of various green stuff mowed to a more or less equivalent height. Looking at same perfect green monoculture, decorated with the same dull landscaping, against the same cookie cutter houses, over and over, (and I have relatives that live in places like that---I'm not making this up) is not my idea of interesting. It takes a lot of water, synthetic fertilizer and pesticides, especially for lawns; then the mowers contribute noise and more pollution. The sooner this idea of wildflowers and mixed grasses catches on to replace the golf-green-syndrome, the happier I'll be. But in the meantime, since my neighbors aren't into the scene either, I don't have to worry about pesticide drift. (The only chemicals wafting on the air is the wonderful odor of barbeque.)

The Premium Hotels seem to be Getting Full

After a while, the bees also started snoozing in my echinacea as well. I've always thought bumblebees were cute, and was delighted to have real ones making their home in my garden.

Links to other garden photographs