Bees, pollen and flowers

The bees have been very happy since we inspected the hive last week! Hoping to install another brood box this week. Here I was filming and the bees are bringing in pollen three at a time. The first week I had the hive it took 5 mintues to see three bees with pollen.

 This hollyhock we planted last year, it did poorly, this year it is blooming. I would love to trade for some assorted hollyhock seeds? These old fashioned gardens full of hollyhocks really delight me.

 A day lily I have had for many years. I saw a honey bee hanging to the tips of the flower petals, no noticeable pollen on them.

 Yummy blackberries planted by the birds and pollinated by our bees. Not enough for cobbler yet.

 Pipevine Swallowtail on our summer phlox.

 One of my girls hard at work. They just started visiting the mountain mint on Wednesday.

  Honey bee on mountain mint with another honey bee on her way in.

 Honey bee on mountain mint.

 Pearl Crescent on the mountain mint.

This is our Mountain Mint patch, it is about 4 ft wide by 7 ft long. These plants were given to me by a friend who lives in the NC mountains from her garden. It will be full of bee, butterflies and wasps for the next three months!

Todays Harvest !

Folks,

This has been a on and off cool/hot season thus far this year. Most of our tomatoes are still doing bad, yet a few baby tomatoes are on the vine. I think the horse manure that we got free might have caused some weird wilting along with the strange weather.

I weeded and mulched the potatoes today and found a few strays on the top as I went, we ate our first potatoes over the weekend. In the photo above you can see the New Red Potatoes and one fingerling potato. The Sugar Snap Peas, Meg has carried some for lunch about everyday for more than a month, we did very well with them harvesting likely several gallons of them. We have been eating the Nelson Carrots for sometime, these were the last of the first row planted. Those beets are the second batch harvested, we will also cook the greens as well.

Here is some kind of mini hollyhock with blooms about one inch.

This day lily I moved from my last place. I bought $20 worth at the Raleigh Farmers Market about 12 years ago. Two years later when I was getting ready to move I dug up a few and brought with me. I rescued a dark form female Eastern Tiger Swallowtail yesterday as it seemed stuck inside a day lily bloom. it flew away unharmed I thought a spider might have had it.

Who ever brought Japanese Bamboo Grass into this country really messed up. We have it everywhere, very hard to control.