Triptych

 This is a hodgepodge of a blog. It is to do with food, communication and bumblebee homes (again).

Food 

In our house we like an early evening drink with a small bite or two to go with it. These morsels are seldom the same. Recently it has been a slice of our home-made bread, cut into small cubes and dried to a crispy state in olive oil. Added before or after have been garlic, chilli, Worcester sauce (after), celery salt, powdered ginger and such. But don't leave the stove when frying these bits as they can be spoiled so easily. Keep turning them. The sound will tell you when they are just right. A second or two later and they will burn.

I have just made some hummus, so that will become a many-flavoured dip with heated pitta bread in slices to dip into it.

And if he oven is on, cook aubergine slices, coated in olive oil, as bites, perhaps with a smear of chilli sauce and half a small plum tomato on top for looks.

When using salt, sea salt adds something special, like the sea saltiness and crunch. 

I have written before how splendid are freshly shelled prawns, cooked quickly in olive oil with a mixture of grated garlic, grated chilli and grated fresh ginger. If the prawns are cut in half, this combination of taste and texture makes a splendid sauce for pasta.

Communication

In my old fashioned and old aged kind of way, distant communication should be by landline/telephone or hand-written letters. But today is different. 

Margreet has moved with the times and communicates with things like text message (sms), e-mail, Whatsapp, Messenger, Spam, Zoom, Face time, browser, Google, Safari, Wikipedia and probably others. There seem to be so many. This is wonderful. But with all these methods, communication (possibly even vital ones) can get lost. Progress with modern communications often involves confusion, usually time-wasting, and also waste of paper. I find much of it beyond me, but essential for my blogs, for instance, when my words leave this keyboard and fly into the ether - thanks to Margreet and her know-how.

Bumblebee Boxes 

I have written, I'm sure, on the value and charm of bumblebees. They pollinate, and do so in all weathers in farmers' fields, gardens and commercial greenhouses. So we must look after them in any way possible.

I have designed and made recently two small winter-hibernating retreats for bees - hopefully bumblebees. I wanted a box where a pregnant bumblebee, in early springtime, could make a nest to bring up a family of young.

So I found a discarded piece of moulded, wooden skirting board, and with saw, nails, and glue made such a possible home - lining it with cotton wool.

What I had been seeking before this construction was a suitable wooden box and not found one.

Then, when collecting the early morning newspaper, and passing houses in our street, there, outside one of them, was an ideal wooden box (probably for jewellery) for someone to take away - which I did. All I had to do then was to drill a hole, make a small landing platform and waterproof it.

So now I have two possible breeding boxes, when a week ago I had none.

Come bumblebees to pollinate our runner beans and reproduce with us next spring - like our great tits did - with two broods.