A-child uses a cordless drill for her first time

A-child holding a pair of bee condos

My next house has a paved patio out back, but no grass.  There is no yard at all.  I'm both dreading and eager for the challenge of figuring out how to compost my food waste when I can't just dump in on the ground outside my back door.  I'm also thinking a lot about my future role regarding flora and fauna . . . a native garden group that I've gotten heavily involved with has me rethinking a bunch of things about the birds and the bees and their connections (or not) to what sits around our homes.

A-child looks at a pair of wooden blocks.  

For example: honey bees.  I know they're having all kinds of problems; this year had a huge kill-off, unfortunately.  Several friends of mine keep honey bees -- one of my friends used to, until the township she lived in started spraying trees near her home with pesticides, and then her bees died off . . . sigh.

But I did not know until recently that honey bees are foreigners:  they're not at all native to the U.S.  And our domestic bees of many sizes and shapes, who serve important roles in our ecology, are also struggling.   In fact, they're struggling even more than they might have, because they have to compete with all the bossy honey bees that people keep introducing into various areas.

Apparently, native bees don't make honey, so that's why Winnie the Pooh lives in Europe and only visits America when we read books.  Also, native bees don't sting, and they don't live in hives.

Pilot holes where I wanted them.  

The best thing people can do for native bees is probably something like plant flowers or stop spraying poisons on the plants they visit.   But since I can't do the best thing in my new neighborhood, I did a tiny little thing that I was able to:  I taught my grand-daughter to use a cordless drill.

We used this drill, together with some old spare blocks of wood, to make bee condos.  (See this website for the official directions:
https://www.pollinator.org/pollinator.org/assets/generalFiles/Build-Bee-Condo.pdf )

Holding the drill with two hands. 

I drilled tiny pilot holes in the right places, and then switched to a larger drill bit so I could get that tutu-ed four-year-old doing her stuff.  She learned how to hold the drill -- yes, you have to put down the flower you picked, so you can hold the drill with both hands.  You also have to keep squeezing the trigger after the drill is all the way down, so that you can pull the drill out.

For the first few holes, I held the drill from the top and guided her, but by the end she could operate the drill on her own once we got it aligned, she could drill the entire hole herself and then pull the drill out.   Awesome.

Now A-child is super-excited; she's taking one of the bee condos to her own home.  She's convinced she's going to have honey in there despite my explanations.   Maybe she's got a little Winnie-the-Pooh inside her.