mason bees

since the thirtieth of last month...

the bee houses i put out the third week of march...

have become increasingly active...

as a new generation of bees...

hatches out...

to keep the relentless dna...

passing along.

pheonix

this twenty-five year old concord grape plant ( rootstock? )...

that produced these vines that trailed along the ground and up into the elm and fir trees that grew next to it...

was reduced to this stump by the clowns that installed the new fence last fall even though i explicitly pointed it out as something i wanted left intact...i was somewhat irritated...actually still am although that has been mitigated to a fair extent becuse...

the "stump" has produced a new vine...the roots live on which "pleases me mightily...i have fenced it off until i can train it into the trees again, mostly to keep marigold ( the dog ) from digging around it...we will be keeping a close watch on this one...

in another surprise i discovered a second vine growing under the fir trees which has already found its way to the tree branches...doubly pleased...i surmise this took root from a fallen grape from a last season...serendipitous...

in the meantime the grapes on the south side of the house that were mislabeled as seedless but are not have bloomed and are on their way to grapehood...

mulberries are ripening on the trees ( there are three back there ) and falling to the ground...they are a bit on the tart side still...the birds will eat them anyway...so will i...

and last in this fruitful discussion, the strawberries are blooming and producing...fruit and daughters

mother's day out back

with seventeen trees in my back yard and five in the front areas of full sun are at a premium and confined to the south side of the yard and house...since part of that is a driveway i have taken to growing what needs full sun in containers...

so i purchased a couple of twenty gallon totes, which were cheap since they did not have lids...shipping and/or ordering error one supposes...drilled drainage holes in the bottoms and covered them with a thin layer of garden soil...

i had cut some red nordland seed potatoes yesterday to allow them to callous...i put them in one container and covered them with more garden soil...

i did the same with some russian banana fingerling potatoes which i did not cut and callous...

and i gave them a shot of water with marigold's help...i will move them into the sun and as they break surface bury them again until they reach the top of the containers...and we will see how well this works ( or not )...

elsewhere around the yard, mason bees are just waking up and getting to work...so far they have filled seventy-five tbes in two bee houses with larvae...the next generation is well under way...

the asparagus continues to produce new spears which i am harvesting although i have left a few to "fern" early to feed the roots...

the ramps on the north side of the house are doing well...hoping for bunching and for flowers both...

the mooseberry bush ( aka high bush cranberry for those of you berift of the bullwinkle j. mooose reference ) is blooming...

the strawberries are blooming as well and beginning to bear fruit...

a dense stand of jerusalem artichokes in one corner of a bed will need close monitoring or they will take over...

the first chinese yam vine of the year has popped up...there will be more...another colonizer...

and, finally, the potato that had been under the lights in the basement has been outside for going on a week...it has clearly shocked and is expressing its ambivalence about the environment it finds itself in...i can relate...more as it comes up.

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.