mason bees

it is a sunny saturday here with temperatures near sixty degrees ( fahrenheit )...flowers are blooming and today i have seen spring bees taking advantage of the opportunity to begin moving their dna to a new generation...

they are fast and somewhat skittish...i do believe that simply my presence disturbs them...and having marigold nosing around pondering what one might taste like doesn't help getting a decent photo ( actually marigold is part of the reason there are mason bees around...as the name implies the bees use clayey soil in their nesting process and marigold, being the terrier she is, opens up a trench in the back yard with little real effort providing ample nesting material )...

the bees are certainly interested in the daffodils and i have noticed them on the crocuses as well...spring has arrived in a number of ways...

aside from the blooms they are showing marked interest in the bee houses around the yard as well...there is an ample supply of them for the mason bees and for the leaf cutters i hope to see later in the summer...so there should be some photos of nesting as spring progresses...we will keep an eye out for those.

asparagus et al

asparagus is popping up in the bed in the back yard...a clear sign it was time to head for campus and open the asprargus bed...i actually resigned from the garden at the end of last season, however, since the asparagus is the last remnant of the perennial garden project on campus and, by extension, among the last bits of kathy forgey on campus i volunteered to attend to the asparagus...

so i drove out to campus, opened the bed, ran a weeding hoe across it and dug back a trench along the asparagus row since asparagus is not the strongest of plants in terms of breaking surface and it appreciates some help...i will fill that back in and add more compost as the season goes on to feed the roots...

there was no asparagus to be seen...only the stumps left behind when i cleared the bed last autumn...they will be along soon enough...

happily the alfalfa made it through the winter and is greening up to feed the bees around june or so ...

unhappily, this row of beds were the first constructed eleven years ago and they are basically falling apart...there needs to be a decision about repair or replacement or removal at some point...

back at home this spud i planted at the bottom of a twelve inch deep container under the lights a month ago is now about eight inches above the top and growing...it can move outside next month and we will see what it yields sometime in june or early july...

the teosinte down there is booming along as well...both plants come from seed i found from 2019...still some viability left in it...

both plants have flowered...this one has silks from two ears it is working on...

and this one is focusing on a single ear so far...seeds? we'll see...