Sunday, July 3, 2016

Bee Careful!

Lilies
It was a perfect 63 degrees at about 7:40 a.m. The sky was a rich, cheerful blue.

The vegetables and flowers in the lower gardens are really coming along. It's so much fun to watch the gardens as they progress through the summer. A lot of hard work goes into them.

It was bird family day today. Young birds of all kinds are learning how to make it on their own. There were young robins, catbirds, song sparrows and yellow warblers out and about with their parents still keeping an eye on them. A very young cardinal was carefully hidden in the large apple tree in the center of the gardens as its parents watched from nearby. Wrens scolded to keep others away from their young.

Bee swarm
The upper gardens had several titmice performing acrobatics, up in a tree. They must have been looking for bugs. Several of them were hanging upside down and they were quite vocal until I came along. Then they all took off. Goldfinch families were feeding on their favorite seeds.

I ran into Mary Lou, who showed me a bee swarm in a tree on the edge of the path on the far side of the bee hives. I called D. Reilly, the beekeeper. He was down on the Cape. He was surprised that there was a swarm at this time. He'd had seven swarms already this spring which he said was very unusual. He couldn't get up here for a couple of days, so nature must take it's course. It's quite an amazing sight.

As the coreopsis and fleabane wane, the black-eyed Susan's are starting to bloom. I have thrown in some wild lupine seeds in hopes that some day we could have a meadow full of purple, pink and white lupine. In Maine, they grow all along the highways and fields in early June and it's quite spectacular. Not sure if the soil is right for them here, but we'll see....