June heat wave

Folks,

April and May were very wet and the garden became lush because of the damp weather. June has been hot, yesterday and today were supposed to perhaps reach 105 degrees f..... The next few days at least 100 degrees.

I'm almost done with my big deck and porch project in Chapel Hill see my post here is a sample photo of my handywork. The landscaper is coming soon to fill in the bottom of those stairs. I might build a play house at the bottom of the hill also.

Back to our garden. Saw this male Black Swallowtail that just emerged next to my bees the other morning. Meg usually collects caterpillars in our garden and her second grade class raises them. We have very young caterpillars right now, they will be finished by July18th when school starts back.

I cleaned up about one third of the ponds edge, bet I carried close to 200 pounds of black berry canes up the hillside while cleaning up. Hoped to get better access to see frogs and dragonflies. Best photo thus far was taken in the main garden. Here is a Great Blue Skimmer easily told by the white face and large size.

Back in 2008 we planted these black-eyed Susans, they barely have lived through all the droughts we have had. And they are planted a bit too much in the shade and just out of reach of the sprinkler. I'm sure it has been three years since we saw a bloom!

Holly Hocks these were planted last year, two seasons before they bloomed, very lovely indeed with blooms over 3 inches each beautiful.

So Meg has been on and off mad at me for not going on a vacation. Just too many unfinished projects to do , my customers waiting way too long and our two elderly dogs now need cleaned up after almost daily. We could not find a house sitter to take care of them nor did we want to drop them off at a kennel. The new cat we named Manny he's a real cut up most of the time. Mad at me tonight for closing the back door on him, it was 100 degrees outside and I left the back door open for a seconds as I filled a glass of water then pushed it closed, he screamed and ran away mad, never knew he was there.

The bees are doing great. My smallest hive Lindsey has for a week had more bees on their porch than the other 4 hives here combined. They lack having much comb and I just started feeding them. My bees at Scott and Paige's garden looked like they made no gains in the past 3-4 weeks, I gave them some syrup on Friday morning and instantly saw 4 bees with pollen! My busiest hive in the farm hive those bees are smoking. The five hives here all seem to be doing well.