It's been a great weekend so far, spent most of yesterday pottering about in the garden and we really seem to be getting somewhere. Janey started by planting out some of the seedlings she's been cultivating in the front room while I cut the grass.

It was at that point that I finally decided we needed a spring rake to give the grass a real good thrashing, so off we pootled. Picked up a few new plants for the garden, mostly herbs and stuff, but also got a lavender-lookalike to entice the bees to come visit. The bees at Wyvale seemed to like this plant, so much so that Janey had to wrestle the plant away from the clutches of the bumble bees.

We also picked up a cheap bird feeder which we hope they'll like, though I imagine that I'll end up having to make a far more robust version in the near future as the squirrel is bound to have a go at it. Not that we mind, as the whole point of it was to get some nice photos out of the landing window. We don't care if the photos are of birds or squirrels.

Back home and with new rake in hand we gave the grass the aforementioned thrashing, and got back into planting out the seedlings. Well, Janey did anyway, I was too busy taking photos of the bumble bees that were ambushing the lavender-lookalike. :-)

One thing I've discovered is that bees are a real pain to photograph. Dogs and cats can be easily convinced to stand still for the second or two you need to take the shot. Even ducks and geese are inquisitive enough to glare a you for a econd or two. Bees on the other hand are a law unto themselves. Even my calming words of "Come on mister bumble bee, there's some nice pollen over here." didn't have any effect on them. I mean, a split second is all I needed but they were far too busy working to take the blindest bit of notice. Oh well, I rattled of a few shots anyway, so hopefully something will come out.

Not put off though I hatched a plan to get the little blighters next time. I have a small matchbox size video camera that I'm thinking of building into a waterproof box and mounting in the garden somewhere. I'm sure I could hide the cables somewhere and track them back to my video setup. Bill Oddie and Kate Humble would be proud of me. :-)

I have no idea if I'll actually build the 'gardencam' and to be honest it doesn't really matter, most of the fun is in the plotting anyway. You never know though, I may just give it a go.

Paul