I got very excited this morning, ladies and gentlemen.  Looking out the back window, I could see that there was a male and female pumpkin flower open at the same time.  Because of a hail storm last month, my pumpkin vine has only one pumpkin growing at the moment.  So I took this fleeting opportunity to fly outside and manually fertilise the lady.  I found the flowers crawling with bees, which was also very exciting, because the numbers of bees have been much fewer due to the recent hot weather and smoky days.

It was lucky I did because a bee was trapped below the stamen of the boy flower! Read more