seven bees

a touch of autumn on the first day of fall and there are behavioral changes as an index...

i found...

seven bumblebees ( including a thoroughly pollen dusted one )...

on the same cluster of flowers in a near catatonic state...did not budge when i stuck a camera lens in their faces...

a long way from the impossible to photograph busy buzzers on the nintey degree ( fahrenheit ) day last sunday...slowing down...it will warm again...they will be on the move...but not this evening...

they are staying in the apian bunk beds.

equinox ( almost ) garlic and relentless dna

it is the day before autumn...overcast...the temperature is just shy of sevventy degres ( fahrenheit )...and time to start planting garlic...

a bought a pound of seed garlic of various varieties and started with a bulb of chesnok red-purple stripe...the bulb rendered ten cloves for planting...i surmise there will be quite a few more cloves in the pound...

i extended an existing bed on the south side of the jerusalem artichokes an turned in some compost before working it with a warren hoe...

i planted each clove, pointy side up, withthe tops about an inch below the surface...because garlic is a heavy feeder i dressed each planting with some worm castings and will doubtlessly be dressing the bed with compost as the season progresses...there wil be more plantings in the traditional garlic bed by the intermediate wheat grass and this bed will probably expand again soon...depends on how many cloves i actualy have to plant yet...

in other news around the yard, mooseberry is doing well and will have garlic company soon enough...

the winter wheat is filling in...most have two leaves and a number have three...

the winter rye is doing as well and most have two leaves so the grain beds are established for the winter...all we need is snow...

last august the old elm tree in the northeast corner of the back yard...which had been hit by lightening at least once...gave up the ghost in a storm and fell acrosst the alley ( knocking down my power line )...

dryad's saddles cropped up feeding on the tree carcass...however the whole "giving up the ghost" thing was premature..

a late summer irruption of twigs and leaves are doing their best to feed the roots...

life goes on...

autumn is on the way

the genetically spliced soy beans are telegraphing the approach of autumn simply by chromatic signal...

the pods are changing color as well...

those spliced in genes may keep the herbicides from killing the beans...that pig weed out in that field tells me the "weeds" are evolving without laboratory help...or, perhaps, in response to the lab help the beans are getting...

there's volunteer corn out in the bean field too ( and let me say here i did not wade out into the field...i stayed on the grassy berm by the road...the volunteers were simply conveniently located at the field perimeter )...

it was fairly stunted in dense yellow #2 terms, however it did produce ears and, a first in my volunteer corn exoerience...i could feel kernels under the husks...not sterile...not hybrid? who knows...they're doing wonderful things in the lab these days...

everyone i could reach had ears...everyone i could touch had kernels...so something new learned from a bean field today...

here at home the wheat is booming along...many plants have a second leaf now...

and the berry greeter in the rye bed...

has found herself in tall company...

there are still some fat clusters of teosinte ears out there...

however most have begun to split open revealing the individual ears...

green seed is still the norm...

although some ears have finished up...i have harvested a small amount of seed...anticipating more...

beyond that, grapes continue to ripen...

and mooseberry is doing just fine thanks.