Hey, peachie, you dropped something

I’ve been waiting and waiting and waiting for the peaches and the pears hanging small and round and scentless to ripen. The peaches have been rockhard so long, I even had time to drape some netting over the tree to keep the birds out. (I have no faith that the netting will do anything more […]

Getting lucky with Woolcarder bees

The Woolcarder bees still like the snapdragons, but they seem to love a big clump of catnip nearby. Sometimes I see at least four or five at once, too fast and too many to subitize. I love watching the males hovering and darting here and there, making sure there’s plenty of sweet nectar for the […]

Readercon is also raspberry week

The raspberry harvest always peaks right around the week of Readercon. I have quarts and quarts in the fridge and the freezer. I offered up a pint of raspberries to the con suite. And there’s still more raspberries that I don’t have time to pick because of Readercon. Hang on there, raspberries, don’t drop off. […]

More coneflowers, more bees

More coneflowers have answered the first coneflower‘s call. This is one of the great bee flowers. My trinity of bees — honeybees, bumblebees, and Agapostemon — visit them, methodically going through the spikes of pollen in the centers. When the Halictus bees are done with the sunflowers, they’ll come to the coneflowers too. Together they […]

At last, the deluge

Two deluges I’ve been waiting for arrived today. First there was all the frantic writing I was at a few weeks ago. It seemed to dry up for a while, and now today I got hit with a deluge of words today: 5,000 words of dubious quality. The other I’ve been expecting ever since I […]

A buffet for bees in the catmint

The mound of catmint, Nepeta “Walker’s Low“, has bloomed all May and June, attracting an amazing array of bees.

Sunflower weather

Now that the heat has hit, I can barely keep up with the flowers. This sunflower bloomed a few days ago, and today already the flowerhead is busy making seeds. The bees have done their work. Traditional varieties of sunflowers are great bee flowers. They give so generously of their pollen, that bees get covered […]

First sign of tomato

In other news, my tomato plant set fruit while I was busy smoking a chicken. Somebody’s enjoying the heat!

Very small fireworks

Hope you’re enjoying the holiday. We’re enjoying the smoked chicken, and the little pink explosions of colors called flowers. Like the Pinks!

Five whole garlics harvested

Today I noticed some stems had fallen over where I planted garlic last fall. Then I remembered: Oh yeah, I planted some garlic last fall! If the leaves have fallen over, maybe the bulbs are ripe. Out comes the trowel, and in goes a little digging, and — hey, presto! — I has garlic. A […]