It's springtime(ish) again, which means the bees are out and about - and this is the season where they are in need of water. (In summer, too, but it's important in spring as well - they need water to be able to digest the pollen.)

Unfortunately, bees cannot swim, so the bee bar should be safe for them. I've found drowned bees in the saucers under pots where there was water standing after the rain. That's sad to see. 

Over the years, I've tried different things, and the current iteration looks like this:

It's a piece of coarse fabric wrapped around a mix of wood shavings and wool. That's set into a pot filled with water, and to prevent accidental drownings next to the fabric roll, I've stuffed in some more wool to keep the surface covered. It took the girls from the neighbourhood a few days to get it, but now they seem to appreciate their new bar! 

It's gotten pretty warm outside - not proper real spring-warm, but also not wintery cool or cold anymore. The snowdrops and crocuses are blooming, and the irises as well. It's a little early for all of them, if you ask me, but with the generally warm weather, I guess it's something we will all have to get used to.

At least they look pretty no matter when! See for yourselves:

The willow fence is almost completely pruned by now, so there's only the rest of the garden to get into shape for the next growing season... 

It's gotten a good bit colder here, and there's also been - snow! Finally!  

And with the nice white background I suddenly noticed... we've forgotten to harvest one of the apples on our tiny apple tree.

It's not a huge loss, though, the apple is about as large as a marble, so we are not short an apple cake due to it! (The tree itself is really tiny, as it was intended as a potted tree for a balcony. The apples it makes are, accordingly, also quite small, but most are larger than marbles. And they are quite tasty too!)

Well, you certainly can't say that the rose in our garden has not been trying hard until the end... 

She did manage to get one flower properly into bloom about mid-November, but the second of the late blooming attempts was really too late. So it got snowed upon and frozen out when it was just half open.

Still quite a feat, though, and somehow I find it very amusing. Shows that not just human beings can be a little too late...

The weather has been weird for a good while here now, with autumns so long and so mild that the rose in our garden is regularly going for a last flowering in October/November. So I figured that we'd might as well make the most out of global warming, and planted a fig bush three years ago. It's hardy enough to survive the winters here, though it has to be protected against late frosts, because it will otherwise just go pouty and mope around and not grow leaves forever (or until it is pruned back a bit again). 

This year is the first time that it actually made figs that managed to ripen, though! Last year it put out about two fruits, and those were a complete disappointment. But this time around, they are actually nice.

They are not very large, but (since the Most Patient Husband of Them All is not as fond of them as I am), they are all mine :)

Next one up to make fruits will be the passionfruit plants and the fig cactus. Though the latter might still need a year or two to grow...

Because I have a few pictures left from my recent photography trip to the garden, here you go: 

That are  leadwort flowers. It's a nice plant, blooming blue and rather robust (like, as mentioned, about all the things growing in our garden). They are not getting too many visitors currently, but that's probably because there is a lot of competition... and occasionally, a bee or bumblebee are enthusiastically making their way from one flower to the next.

There's more flowers on the other side of our fence, growing from underneath the willows. I've always found it lovely when flowers peek out of a garden, into the street, making the public space (which is usually drab, grey, and rather boring) a little bit more colourful and pretty. And now our own plants do that too!

And finally, some minstrel bugs doing, well, what they feel they should do: 

Did I mention the many, many grasshoppers also active at the moment? The bee hotels are sort of mostly on hiatus at the moment, with very little activity (most of the slots are taken, and hopefully young bees are developing inside), so there's not much going on there. But the meadow is full of grasshoppers making their grasshoppery noises, a concert that goes on all day and most of the night, swelling and ebbing and altogether wonderful to listen to.

Here's some of the musicians:  

The different species also sound quite differently - it really is fascinating!