Rainbow landscape lV

Well, this is an *amazing* shot, regardless of the number of bees. The flowers are gorgeous, and the bee looks great on there. I’m glad you went back to get your camera!

Are you sure that’s comfrey and not borage? The flower shape and manner of growing looks just like the borage in my garden.

GORGEOUS!

I can almost hear the humming…

:)

I just Googled comfrey and borage images and found 2 UK nurseries showing borage with the hanging , hairy buds. Looks likely to me.
In any case, the pictures are glorious.
Thank you for them, Robin.

I can never get one bee in focus, so thank you for the photo, which is glorious magnified, with clear little bee wings and everything*! Did the hellhounds ignore the bees? Most of mine try eating bees, which scares me slightly.

and I hope the grazes are healing nicely. Riding again tomorrow :)

*Sorry, just spent hours sorting photos onto flickr so brain now addled.

Hmmm… have you checked your camera settings to see what picture quality it’s set at? If it’s set at a higher one, the card will get filled much more quickly – I know that as default, my camera was set to the highest setting, and as a result it had barely any space on it. I’ve since switched it down to the lowest and haven’t noticed any difference in quality at all. ^^

Wow, that’s beautiful (apply to all the photos, please). I’d like to sit there and think quiet happy thoughts, if it weren’t for all the bees buzzing busily by.

Same family anyway …… ;)

Bees were on my mind, so here is a bee on a sunflower

http://www.flickr.com/photos/susan_from_athens/2690813176/

I too felt most triumphant at having managed to snap the picture in the rare instance that it was not buzzing around.

You mention bee houses. The landscape in Greece is dotted with hives as growing honey is a major cottage industry here. One of my favourite clueless American tourist stories (everyone in Greece has a number, I’m afraid) was new-agey psychic from NYC visiting an (also American) friend of mine. So this lady indigantly turns to my friend, on seeing the hives on a remote hillside and demands to know why people dump their filing cabinets out in the countryside. Since this episode I think “filing cabinets” every time I see bee hives. :)

That IS an amazing picture.

But I also have a link thing for you… have you seen or heard of Literature-Map?
http://www.literature-map.com/robin+mckinley.html

Something fun to click away at.
Just found it, and thought it slightly apropos, in view of newly revealed LibraryThing page and so on.
Huzzah.

–Julia

Beautiful shots–that field is gorgeous set into the green of the surrounding country.

Lots of bees seem drawn to blue/purple flowers. I have vinca and ajuga that come out early and the bees–especially big ones like bumblebees–are on them right away.

The photos are great. (Looking in calender to see when I can go to South England again and go hiking)

You could write a travel book with photos in your spare time!

(just kidding, but the photos are excellent)

Its very borage looking to me, im seeing the flowers as bright cobalt blue, no purple at all, and comfrey leaves that Im familiar with are big and fat and juicy and pale greeny grey and covered in lots of white hairs.

I have no idea why it would be borage unless its for honey?

I love the slightly unearthliness of this shot! It’s so…weird and beautiful fairy gardeny.

Re: space on your memory card, I wonder if there IS more room, but you have the resolution on its highest setting. Computer Man should be able to show you how to adjust down to a lower res for more pics pretty easily (really!). The only difference it’ll make to you is that you will no longer be able to blow up the pictures to wall-covering size without some graininess.

I agree with Kenaressa, this looks more like borage to me than comfrey. Here’s a link to some comefry flowers, http://www.americansection.us, and I looked at several others. They all seemed to be more narrow bells in a flat raceme (if that’s what it’s called), where borage flowers are star-shaped in a spreading one, like the ones in your picture. The point of stamens in the center of the star (the stamens in the comfrey pic are hidden) and the that heavenly cerulean blue says BORAGE to me…it’s why I grow it. That said, the two plants are related. And I love your pics, if I came on a field of borage I would be in heaven!

And I must say I’m enjoying your blog…and have added Spindle’s End and Sunshine to my bookshelf as a direct result.

Blue starflowers with bees in any case – what a lovely thing to see in a field!

Hi!

First-time poster, long-time reader, and of course I /would/ have to start things off on the wrong foot by taking Kenaressa’s side against you on the borage/comfrey question. Because I just had to go poking around looking for more pretty purple field pictures and, well, just see for yourself:

http://www.mike-watson.co.uk/Landscape/slides/DSC_1632.html

http://www.flickr.com/photos/skink74/2639100864/

Found these by googling ‘Hampshire borage.’ ‘Hampshire comfrey’ didn’t turn up any sweeping landscape photos at all, at least that I could find. Not that a lack of evidence proves anything, but… well, I’m feeling kind of awkward and sticklerish and rambling now, so time for hush. (Besides, I want to go back and look at more scenic Hampshirey goodness.)

Oh, but I do have to finish by saying how I ended up finding your books in the first place, back when I was a young teen who judged books by their covers. And the first one I picked up was that US paperback of The Blue Sword with that cover I think you’ve gone on record as saying you hated, only I loved it right off because it had a chestnut horse on the cover, and nobody writes chestnuts in fantasy. Not as the hero(ine)’s horse, at least. So as the longtime care and carrot provider for a horse that could charitably be described as sungolden (except on mud days), I’d like to thank you for that, and for Harry and Corlath and the King’s Riders and Narknon as well!

~Mardy

http://outdoors.webshots.com/photo/1363057283045909336pIyMFa – a nice closeup

http://www.comfreycentral.com/images/index.htm

Also re your memory card filling up – on my camera (Canon S5IS) I have two settings which affect the image file size

- actual image size
- image quality

So even small images at hi quality take quite big files – but Im sure Computer Man can sort you out

I really wish I was somewhere near so I could come over and help out on these things, cos they are usually easy and quick to fix if you know how :)

Here is an excellent website for identifying weeds – er – interesting plants, and it seems to confirm the borage diagnosis.

http://www.british-wild-flowers.co.uk/B-Flowers/Borage.htm

I know nothing about the uses of borage except that the flowers are good in Pimms.

BTW comfrey is now on the banned list in South Africa because of liver damage risk, among others.

http://www.doh.gov.za/docs/pr/pr0630-f.html

Or rather, it was banned years ago and there’s now another notice about it.

My borage is also prickly – discovered when I transplanted them – but I was sick when I had comfrey and missed their flowering altogether. Still very good for the garden though. I just let it die back and ‘sink in’

Much light and many virtual candles still