MY POOR WORMS

Our worm farm has become a casualty of the extreme weather conditions. Three days of 45 deg C heat has finished them off. My Dad rang on Thursday to say his worm farm had succumbed and when I checked ours it looked OK. This morning though, it was a different story. Despite being in the shade and having water poured over it a few times a day, it looks as though a lot of them are now nothing more than shrivelled up strips.

Our garden is not much better. Everything has suffered terribly and the front lawn is brown crispies. We are trying to save our trees by using the grey water from the laundry on them but some of them look very sick. Many of the trees have survived the last 30 years, but the drought over the past three years is starting to take its toll. We have had water restrictions on garden watering for the past three years and only the toughest plants are holding on.


On a more positive note, it seems as though we have managed to relocate the beehive (see earlier post). It was almost a catastrophe as about two weeks ago we went out to see how the bees were weathering the heat, to find that one side of the nest had melted and fallen to the ground. There were many baby bees just hatching from the fallen piece and it was quite upsetting to see them trying to fly when they didn't quite seem ready for it.

The bee keeper came over the next day and cut the original hive out of the tree and put it into the wooden hive. He also put the melted piece in as well. For a couple of nerve wracking days, the bees acted very strangely, swarming on the outside of the drums which the hive is sitting. It may be that half of the hive departed to foreign parts, but we do seem to have a lot of bees still flying in and out and they appear to have weathered the heat reasonably well. We have caught them drinking from the saucers of some of our pot plants, so now we have a dish of water on top of the hive as well.

This photo is a view of the hibiscus tree in which the original hive was hanging. The poor tree now has many shrivelled flowers (purple blobs) and leaves. If you look closely above the hive, you may be able to see a couple of very small pieces of the hive which still cling to the tree.