the news isn't always good

anyone who checks in here with any regularity may recall how pleased i was to find the leaf cutter bees nesting in a bee house i put out when i set the cocoons out to hatch last june...yes there were the inevitable earwigs nesting in there too but there were bees and that was what mattered...i took the bee house down in november and per the recommendations of the people i purchased the bees from, i stored it in my daughter and son-in-law's unheated garage...and today i went to reclaim the bee house and bees...

obviously at some point in the past six months or so the garage became not quite unheated enough...these things happen...nature can be uncooperative in terms of consistency in temperature...and three of the ten leaf plugged tubes the girls filled hatched out...including the one she is so diligently working on in the first photo...

biased as i am about the bees i cannot fine it in me to be overly upset about expired earwigs...

however the bees made me very unhappy...

so i hung the house with the seven intact tubes back where it was last season..it is early but needs must when the devil vomits in your kettle...we will see how it goes...

in somewhat more upbeat news..these three spuds i started under the lights in the basement...

all had roots protruding thought he bottoms of the peat pots they were in...

and, as anticipated, they were all pretty well pot bound as well...

so i cleaned out three containers...

and gave them new homes for 2020...i left them in a spot that will get some morning sun but will be mostly shade through the day to harden off for a while before i move them south to the sunnier part of the yard...a mixed gardening bag today...nothing unusual about that...hopefully the bees will do alright..and the spuds too...there will be more of each over the next month as transplants come out of the basement and the batch of cocoons i ordered in january arrive in june...there will be alfalfa blooming by that time and, perhaps, the leaf cutters will find some potato blossoms to gather pollen from as well.