Red-bee, stead-bee....GO!

It's a sunny day in England, a warmth is in the sky,
The garden's looking raddled, then so again am I.
It's time to plant some flowers, for bees to make their honey,
So this corner of our homestead will be forever sunny.

And so I don my wellies, and head to the back door
I come back in coz I forgot my gloves, and leave mud on the kitchen floor...

Oh stop! For heaven's sake, Denise, give your poor reader a rest will you? You're not a poet and you really should know it.

So anyway, I drag Andy to the garden centre so I can forge ahead with the plans for the bee garden. Yesterday, after attempting to write a tiger story and failing abysmally as I suddenly realised the story I was writing had actually been written before (remember 'The Tiger Who Came to Tea?' I thought it sounded familiar), I immersed myself in gardening books and magazines and planned out the plants for Bee Garden Project 2009. I am thrilled to find that most of the bee-friendly flowers are ones that have been favourites all my life. Good, old-fashioned cottage garden plants like my grandparents grew in their gardens.

We return with ten bags of multi-purpose compost, half a dozen foxgloves, half a dozen lavenders and a five foot high pussy-willow tree which is currently standing in the hall like an ostentatious coat-stand. After looking at other ready-made plants I decided to grow my other choices from seed so I got a packet each of antirrhinum,verbena, penstemon, scabious, poppy, browallia, forget-me-not, aquilegia, aster, cornflower, hollyhock and lupin. I especially like the antirrhinums because they are called 'Chuckles.' I refused to buy the candytuft because I think the garden centre had got their labelling wrong. What they were trying to sell as candytuft wasn't the plant I remembered from my childhood. But I suppose I may have been wrong, I was only six at the time...

All I need to do now is sow the seeds in the green-house and dig up the front garden whilst I'm waiting for them to grow big enough to plant out. Oh yes, and clean out the greenhouse after the chickens have been using it all winter as a shelter/ hen spa.

And then there's the question of the bees themselves. I've read a couple of books and seen a bee-keeping demonstration at our county fair. And I've tracked down an experienced bee-keeper who does individual bee-keeping lessons using his own set of organic hives. But where can I locate a hive without upsetting the neighbours? I spent some time this morning staring out of our landing window at the flat roof of the extension. 'Hmmm,' I thought, 'we could keep a hive out there.' It's sheltered and catches a good dose of sun in the mornings to encourage the little buzzers to get out of bed. I would have to access it via a ladder from the outside as the landing window is too tiny for me to squeeze through. Well, I might be able to squeeze through but I'm not prepared to try and end up getting stuck like Pooh Bear in Rabbit's burrow. (Although the honey analogy would be approriate). And the roof edge has built-up ridges of about 18 inches that I would need to negotiate (and bear in mind this would have to be performed whilst wearing full martian bee outfit and carrying a smoker and several sharp tools). I'm guessing the roof would be strong enough to bear the combined weight of a hive and me. Or a hive and me stamping around in a panic if the bees have a funny moment whilst I'm tending them.

The back garden isn't an option, being hen domain. Having established that Mrs Slocombe has mental health issues I wouldn't put it past her to have a go at eating bees or at least try knocking on the hive door in order to try and sell them Avon products (her latest money-making venture - she's decided she wants to save up for a caravan and she's seen a funky new model from Germany called a Tab that she's taken a shine to).

Maybe I could screen off an area of the front garden? What do you think?The neighbours would never know if I employed low animal cunning and discretion i.e building the hive and screen at two in the morning and saying 'Bees? What bees?'. They wouldn't notice the comings and goings of 10,000 buzzy insects, would they?

Nah...I bet I could get away with it. I'm very tempted to have a try.