I finally got my warm weather outting photograph loaded! It's from the bee yard visit with Mark on Sunday. This is our Deadman Creek yard. I had not seen it since it was established so I was so happy we had a gorgeous day, filled with sun and a cool breeze. My bee suit can get warm but I sure appreciated the security of knowing none of the little ladies could get me.
Monday turned out to be a nice, mild day as well though a little less sunny. I did manage, however to spend a few minutes sitting on the back deck with Smokey when I went home for lunch - we have this nice little area where we planted non-running bamboo years ago and the shot below if of the leaves hanging over the deck. I love bamboo. If we had a big piece of property, I'd want to plant the HUGE kind that have poles that grow to 4-6 inch diameters. These are delicate and only grow to about 1/4 inch or so.
Today brings a cold front - the one that's dropping blizzards north of us! It is currently in the lower 30s with gusting winds that drop the wind chill to the mid to upper 20s. Nice! I feel like I'm back in Virginia! The forecasters are calling for snow later this week. I am not letting myself get too excited about that because I don't want to be disappointed. :-) Still, I'm hoping...
Thien, thanks so much for your comment yesterday. It's good to hear from you. I hope you'll be growing those lovely veggies again this year. Good to know bees are thriving as here in Europe so many have died.
ReplyDeleteDo bees suffer from stress?
ReplyDeleteHi Jilly, I was just thinking about the veggie garden for this year. :-) I definitely want a lot of sunflowers for the bees.
ReplyDeleteKris, it is possible to stress the bees in different ways. We don't move our bees around for pollination so that they may have a "rest" period after the heavy harvest season. This gives them time to grow or Mark may divide strong hives to create additional hives. They can also build up their honey store so that they can feed on it during the winter when not much blooms. Some bees are moved to other states for pollination service in places such as the almond farms out in California, which is big money these days. We may do local pollination one day but doubt we'd send our bees too far. Two years ago the heavy drought created stress since they bees didn't have a lot of water, pollen or nectar sources. :-(