The flower is one of my favourites: in Spanish it’s a girasol – which neatly translates to “turnsole” in English, though we know them more commonly as sunflowers.
We get lots of carpenter bees around here. They are huge – that flower is easily the size of a dinner plate – iridescent black and not really at all like the bumble bees or honey bees I’m used to from the UK. Even so, you instinctively know they are bees from the way they fly. Sadly, this one didn’t stick around for me to get a better picture.
They are around all year, whenever it’s sunny. The second photo was snapped back in the winter; I suppose the poor b** had succumbed to the freezing overnight temperatures.
(This time, of course, I can’t complain that it didn’t stay still for me: the inadequacies of the photo are entirely my own fault.)
don't confuse the narrator 