Last nectar of summer

Ivy flowers provide a last autumn feast for bees, wasps, hoverflies and other six-leggedy folks, before Jack Frost comes with his fingers of icy death. 

If you pass by an ivy-clad tree or wall at this season on a sunny day 

you may hear the whole thing humming.

The flowers will be followed by small black berries, not for humans, but for birds 

and small rodents when other food is running low in late winter and early spring.