on campus

the rain last week...

did put a bit of green back in the campus garden lawn..but not much...

over in my "offical" bed...

there is some hopi blue maize up...

and some sweet clover has taken up residence with a volunteer spud...

the alflalfa has erupted from both sides of its alleged enclosure...

and is blooming robustly...

and my most important correspondent will be pleased that , not only is the alflafa ignoring its limits, it has escaped completely and there is a volunteer stand outside another bed...

the spuds on the back side of the asparagus are doing well...

and the plant that was threatening to bloom last trip out has done so...

it is warm and there is no rain in sight so i watered thoroughly...

making sure the soil was moist at least six inches down...

and no, i did not forget the escaped alfalfa...the carolina horse nettle has been blooming so here is some solanum morphology

horsenettle...

potato...

horse nettle...

potato...

horse nettle...

potato..clearly cousins...later there may be tomato and bittersweet nightshade blooms to compare as well...no eggplant though...you will have to find those on your own.

variables

despite 1.3" of rain earlier this week...

the weather forecast in terms of rain is grim...

and the drought monitor forecast for the next three months is...extreme drought...so...my garden beds will survive...one wonders how the bi-polar monoculture in the indistrial fields will be doing...and what the price of corn and soy beans will be like soon...specifically probably unpreidictable, however one surmises they cost will not go down...

out in the back the wheat on the compost pile is doing just fine...

the mulberries are in various states of ripeness...( the ripe ones are both seedy and sweet )...

the concord grapes in the fir tree are coming along...

as are the seedless grapes on the trellis...we will be getting back to these soon...

the berry plants are throwing stolons out everywhere...

while the bee hatchery is quiet...that will chage as the temperatures rise...

the deer fence i put up around the teosinte and maize beds seems to be working...

the damage to both has ceased...at least for the nonce...

and damage and loss are the subject of the rest of this post...mooseberry seems to be hosting some aphid herding ants and they seem to be impeding the new growth on this stem...this will be ending...they can move to the teosinte when it matures...it does not seem to mind them...

as i said, the grapes are coming along...and, as last years bird tape experiment was a dismal failure, this year i went in a different direction...

i purchased some netting...

and covered the vines on the trellis...

i began to cover the concords in the fir tree as well...however this is going to take some thought, experimentation, and a bit more work to see through...more as it comes up

BEES!!

my annual supply of leaf cutter bees came by fedx today arriving about one-thirty this afternoon...i set the tube of cocoons in the refrigerator and used the fifteen minutes to set up the hatchery...i retrieved the tube, opened it, and poured some of the cocoons out in my hand...

there were some hatched out males in there, dopey from the cold...

one by one...

they began to warm up...

and take off to go be bees...

this guy was hanging around the hatchery and i had to move him along...

so that after i put the cocoons in the hatchery i could affix the lid...

he came back after it was on...

did some clambering while exploring...

and then just stared at me a while before he took off to have a look around the yard while he waited for the girls to hatch...my thoughts are he'll be back.