Just a Random Garden @anipgarden - Tumblr Blog

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I’ve made a gardening discord! Open to all, whether you’re a gardening blog or just like plants, green thumb or black thumb! Feel free to come here if you like talking about plants, sharing pictures of your plants, or giving advice and just chatting with people who love plants too!

#discord #gardening #gardening tips #plantblr #gardenblog #group chat #groupchat #not gardening

How does one properly expose seeds to smoke for germination purposes?

#gardening #seed starting #wildflowers #out of queue #i have a theory about sandhill milkweed germination but im too anxious to set those fuckers on fire

disappearinginq

We're going to see if this works.

Ah HA! It did work! This is a walk through of the garden last year, right before sunset so you get the lighting and the sounds of the birds and the insects. I replay this over and over when I'm stressed and need something peaceful to think about.

#outdoor gardening

cannedbreads

November

#flowers #outdoor gardening #pollinator gardening

transmasc-malleus

curated 🌿🌻🍂🍁

#art

artifacts-and-arthropods

Fairy Bees: these tiny bees can measure less than 2mm long, which is smaller than a carpenter bee's eye

Above: two different species of fairy bee

Bees of the genus Perdita, also known as fairy bees, are some of the smallest bees in the world. Their tiny bodies can measure as little as 1.6mm long, which is smaller than the eyes of many bumblebees and carpenter bees.

Above: a fairy bee depicted next to a carpenter bee (genus Xylocopa)

The smallest species in this genus is the mini fairy bee, Perdita minima, which is so small that it's often mistaken for an ant.

Above: Perdita minima standing next to a quarter

As this book explains:

With almost 640 species, most restricted to the southwestern USA and adjacent parts of Mexico, this genus forms a species swarm of mostly very small ground-nesting bees. One of its species, the aptly named Perdita minima, shares the record for being the smallest bee in the world at just 1/16th of an inch (1.6 millimeters) in length. Unsurprisingly, it favors similarly tiny flowers, such as those of the whitemargin sandmat (Chamaesyce albomarginata).

Above: close-ups of Perdita perpallida and Perdita heliotropii

Fairy bees are solitary, meaning that they don't form colonies or live together in hives. Each female builds her own nest by creating a small tunnel in the ground and then stocking it with pollen.

Above: a fairy bee standing on a dime and another one standing on a quarter

This article describes the nesting process in greater detail:

Fairy Bees are “mining” bees, referring to the fact that they are ground nesting bees. The females excavate tunnels in the ground somewhere within a short distance of a food source. They then visit flowers, feeding on nectar and collecting pollen on specialized hairs on their legs known as “scopae.”

The females then deliver these pollen bundles to their subterranean nests as a food source for their larva. The larva hatch, consume the pollen bundle, develop through metamorphosis into adult bees and the cycle continues.

Above: Perdita minima crawling on the antenna of a carpenter bee

Most fairy bees are specialist foragers with very short tongues, so they prefer shallow flowers. They typically fly during the summer and autumn, timing their emergence to coincide with their favorite host plant.

Above: Perdita leotola

Sources & More Info:

Minnesota Native Bees: Fairy Bees

Bees of the World: Genus Perdita

Honey Bee Suite: Perdita minima, the Smallest of the Small (PDF)

Field Guide to the Common Bees of California: Genus Perdita

Local News Pasadena: Photographing a Nearly Microscopic Bee You've Probably Never Noticed

iNaturalist: Fairy Bees

Facebook: The Bees in Your Backyard

leebrontide

When your city is under siege in the middle of winter, you plan a garden. A garden celebrating native plants, and deep roots, and knowing that eventually winter will end and we will still be here and still blooming.

And if those plants mostly come in cheap little seed packets so I can try and grow them en mass, then that means I can spread plants for butterflies, bees and fireflies throughout my beloved neighborhood come spring.

(pale purple coneflower, new jersey tea, rosy milkweed, shooting star, anise hyssop, calico aster, native geranium, prairie rose, bee balm)

#god i wish that were me #sometimes im tempted to just take all the stuff out of my pollinator garden and replan it from the ground up #but i feel bad digging things up bc they might die

rainie-is-seasonchange

Campsis grandiflora.

Kamakura, Japan.

#flowers #orange flowers #outdoor gardening

michaelnordeman

Buff-tailed Bumblebee/Bombus terrestris/mörk jordhumla. Värmland, Sweden (October 12, 2025).

#bees #flowers #purple flowers #outdoor gardening #pollinator gardening

gardenvarietygay

Dear fellow gardeners, unless your last frost date is April 1st or you’re starting something with a very long germination period, it is probably too early to be starting seeds for your veggie garden. If you have the lights, pots, and heat mat set up and are itching to start, might I recommend growing some lettuce indoors?

You’re almost certainly not eating enough veggies in winter (who is!) so why not grow something really easy you can munch in like two to three weeks? Loose leaf lettuce sprouts in about a week and reaches full size in about 45 days, altogether that puts you in late February/early March, a normal time to start other veggie seeds for most people.

You could also try:

Planting a packet of wheatgrass seeds in literally any container with some dirt and making a little treat for your cat.

Growing herbs like cilantro or parsley indoors, they typically bolt in the heat so you might have better luck inside as long as they get enough light and have deep containers.

Starting some microgreens

#my last frost date is February am I allowed to start yet i keep overthinking and never actually starting seeds

zandrapaints

gouache paintings I made for my friend's wedding invitation :')

#art

dinoserious

concepting

geopsych

There’s a jungle of cosmos in the front garden. Sometimes bees sleep in them.

#flowers #pink flowers #cosmos #cosmos do really well in my pot garden but im nervous abt planting more bc idk if theyre native here #or. i dont think theyre native but idk if theyre invasive #this is really tempting me tho

nashoba-holba

just a guy wistfully looking at a $150 online shopping cart full of seeds

#dude like genuinely. i havent looked at seed sites in months because i knew id fuck myself over

stark1lling

Posting wasp propaganda because my ass is seething yo!

Update! Edited background to be lighter for better legibility, usually use grey backgrounds for artwork and forgor that it probably wouldn’t be great to read!

oh-he-grows

More than anything else, gardening has taught me how sweet and beautiful and unique and important wasps are

they are unapologetically my favorite bugs and I will coexist with them as long as I live

#pollinator gardening #wasps #pollinators

solarpunkaestheticweek

The time is approaching... just over the horizon...

SOLARPUNK AESTHETIC WEEK 6!!

The hosts for this event are @fennopunk, @solarpunkani, and @mendingourstars! We'll be reblogging and chatting from those blogs about the event as well, so feel free to drop a follow!

What’s this all about? Solarpunk Aesthetic Week (SAesW) is a biannual week-long celebration of the aesthetics around the Solarpunk genre and movement! As Solarpunks, we look forward to a hopeful future, and this event is meant for all of us to take part in visualizing that future and working towards creating it step by step! So let’s get creative, get our hands dirty, and tell our stories together!

“But it’s winter! There’s less sun in the sky, it’s cold, it’s miserable, what’s Solarpunk about this time of year at all?!”

We firmly believe that solarpunk looks different in different times of year--whereas in spring and summer we might be growing tomatoes and dreaming of greenhouses and sunny communities, in winter we might be doing lots of work--mending up clothes or making new ones, planning future gardens and actions, reading and writing to help visualize the future we want to achieve. Sure, solarpunk is generally associated with the color and warmth of spring and summer, which is all the more reason to truly think about what solarpunk will be like in the wintry months. There’s plenty to do, and you can take part any way you’d like to!

If it’s dark and cold during this wintry time for you, it could be an excellent time to dive into Lunarpunk as well! Lunarpunk is the night side of Solarpunk in a sense, so its a good time to explore this closely related aesthetic. It's also the subtheme of this year's winter event!

In addition, consider looking into Polarpunk! It’s a smaller aesthetic, but you’re sure to find plenty of inspiration and wintry vibes to draw inspiration from! If you’re dealing with snow and ice and cold temperatures, Polarpunk very well may be your Solarpunk!

But also, we aren’t forgetting about our friends in the Southern Hemisphere! For you all, it’s summer, and we’re excited to see what you do to celebrate!

Solarpunk Aesthetic Week Four will be taking place on the 51st week of the year, so December 15th - 22nd! Feel free to share anything you do to the tag #solarpunk aesthetic week, or submit it to the blog!