Rope on our dock.

 

Water, dock

Very oily looking this day
 

Smiling cloud on our dock today.

 

Circles and squares, Dock, ICW,Holga

 

Spanish moss and shadows, dock

 

Scott's dock, ICW

 

Clematis, post-hurricane

 After Nicole this tough little plant flowered in defiance.

The kumquats are almost ready.

 

Dock, Roscoe

 

Spring rain, Dock, Roscoe

 

Our daughter Kate on our dock.

 

Rain, dock, home

 

Pomegranate, Dock, Home

It was delicious. 

Low tide, dock, ICW

 

Lichen on pomegranate, dock, Roscoe

Our little pomegranate tree, that produces one fruit a year, has this lovely light green lichen on its trunk and older branches. It seems to do no harm and is lovely in closeup.

Clematis, on our dock.

Two days of solid rain made this old vine very happy.

Old friends

 Two old friends came by our dock on their way north from Miami to Vermont. They stopped just off our dock and we got all caught up on kids, grandkids and our lives. They look great.

I couldn't get over the remote in Donnie's hand. He used it to control thrusters to move the boat sideways. He kept the boat in position for 15 minutes.

Two bees for Martina and Julia

 The above picture is the Mason bee nest I referred to in the bee post. Pretty interesting critters. They are solitary. When they find a hole that suits them they go in and lay an egg. Then they fill the little room with pollen and nectar. Then they put up a wall of bee concrete and lay another egg, until the tube is full. They are crafty enough to lay all female eggs until the last chamber, where they lay a male egg. The male hatches, eats his lunch and chews his way out. Then he hangs around until females start to hatch and mates. Because there are a lot of females from different tubes hatching at the same time, and a lot of males flying around, inbreeding doesn't seem to be a problem. They are tireless pollinators and do not sting. Before European honeybees were introduced they were one of the alpha pollinators in North America.

This is what the Carpenter  (Xylocopa Viginica) bees are doing to our dock. They are very big, like a bumblebee, with much less hair. They build a nest by chewing into unpainted wood and dead branches. The males vigorously defend the nests by hovering near them. Mainly to chase off other insects as they have no sting. They have a yellow dot in the middle of their forehead. When I walk out on our dock, in the warm months, there will be one or two males the get right at eye level and hover. If you call their bluff, they fly off. Luckily, they are another tireless pollinator, so we pretty much leave them alone.

Clouds and water, ICW, Roscoe

My wife and I were sitting on the dock, reading, yesterday. The water was full of dead fish due to some really cold weather last week. Temperatures in the 20s Fahrenheit  here will kill off a bunch of sensitive species, especially catfish. Therefore we had a lot of opportunistic birds, mainly seagulls and pelicans, taking advantage of the free lunch. So, I had my camera along to prove that I am not a very good bird photographer, requires too much patience. Some clouds moved in, in a "buttermilk" pattern and the water rippled up to match it, thus, this picture.

Janie's dock, PVB

Our dock had started to get rickety. I have had plants on it for 20 years and the wood under the pots had rotted to an unsafe degree. My wife, Janie, decided to redo it. She measured and had the lumber delivered. One day she and a friend from Habitat for Humanity Paul (thank you Paul), where she volunteers twice a week, got it started. For the next week she ripped up old wood, cut and placed new wood and screwed it down tight. This is about the halfway point and it is now finished. The work is superb. I had nothing to do with the build. She didn't even use me for stoop labor (I am quite good at being in the way). So we now have a lovely new dock. I am so proud of her.