That green stuff and book cover!

Clouds of oak pollen the past 2-3 days here. This morning a long steady rain is helping wash it away. The Purple Rain pansies here yesterday were blooming almost green with pollen. Driving from Durham to Hillsborough(10 miles at most) I counted 6 clouds of pollen along the way. Usually Loblolly Pines are the trees creating pollen clouds here, these areas had little in the way of pines, had to be oaks.

Yesterday at 9am my bees were pollen drunk on their porch not even thinking of flying off to get pollen. Exciting news about the nuk (small bee hive) we started 8 days ago. On Wednesday small groups of bees were outside the nuk, by Friday there was an orientation flight of 40-50 bees, I was so excited!

Meg pulled all the house plants outside yesterday, the house seems so empty now. The plants some got sunburned yesterday, today they are getting soaked.

Oh even more exciting news I am pleased to announce that a photo of my is going to be on a book cover, my second book cover. Here it is a female Diana Fritillary, I took this photo 12 years ago! These butterflies are kind of rare and females are very hard to find. The prime spot this photo was taken the next year VADOT had a bulldozer remove all the Common Milkweed along this rarely used forest road. To my knowledge this site is still a goner.

Below are some photos I took in the rain using an umbrella this morning.

One of the woodland beds we added a rock border to weeks ago, notice the new blue pots in place. Mostly large hellebore plants, hanging over the rocks is that picotee dougle hellebore. You can see a few native May Apple growing next to the rocks as well, they were not planted there.

A close up of our Edgeworthia, beautiful isn't it?

  Remember those peas I planted on January 26th, now nearly 2 foot tall, likely be 3 foot in a few days with this cool rain soaking them. The temps have been in the 80s most of last week, too hot for peas, this is why we plant them very early...