The season is moving forward in the daffodil community. Early daffodils have faded, mid season are just past their prime and the lovely late delicate daffodils are budding ready to open.
Here you'll see late daffodils in bud and the red tulips Gary planted starting to open. This has been a great year for bulbs.
And the next visitor, after the hairy bittercress has been around for a few days, is a favorite of mine, which showed up a couple of years ago. I think maybe this creeping Jenny hitched a ride on another plant.
In some places it's an invasive nuisance but here it's a plant I like to see, which will form a carpet around the pachysandra, sometimes climbing right over it, and there will be small yellow flowers.
On the occasional warm day, bees are already out and about, and thanks to Chris, I'm reading a great book about all kinds of bees
I've always meant to learn more about our local bee species. I've tried a bit but even in pictures they all look very similar, at least to my untrained eye, and I'm usually pretty good with bugs!
ReplyDeleteBuzz is really good, very readable.
DeleteWhat I know about bees would fit on a grain of pollen from a plant that produces very tiny pollen grains. But I remember being knocked sideways a few years ago by the tiny shiny GREEN bees in my garden! I hope you'll learn a lot and share it :)
ReplyDeleteI think they may be sweat bees. I was all excited to see them on my sedum flowers.
DeleteIt is great to see spring flowers of all sorts beginning to bloom...and bees feasting on the dandelions
ReplyDeleteI encourage my neighbors to leave dandelions alone while pollinators are at work. They're valuable, aside from being a spring tonic green for humans.
DeleteI have yet to see any daffodils blooming in Nashua, NH, so your blooms were lovely to see, Boud.
ReplyDeleteYour season is quite a bit later than here. So you have it to look forward to.
DeleteI miss bees - I note that there seem fewer around during the hot Summers, and we had a very hot Summer - mind you, V is also not as active in the garden as he once was so there are slimmer pickings out there. I remember once (many, many years ago when I was child-free and lived in a lovely share house on Hampstead Road in Brisbane) seeing a pretty flower and leaving the vine to grow - only to discover that THAT was the Morning Glory's (Ipomoea indica) insidious plan to take over the world.
ReplyDeleteIn this climate morning glory is an annual, wiped out by winter so it doesn't get to nuisance status, bindweed neither.
DeleteSince we now have croci, I guess we'll see daffs in a week or three.
ReplyDeleteYour season is maybe a couple of weeks later than here.
DeleteBees are so interesting to study and learn about.
ReplyDeleteLove the Vonnegut quote.
ReplyDeleteI should really learn more about the different types of pollinators who visit us. And it would be a very good thing for us to start keeping bees. Some friends of ours tried a few years ago and were so excited about it and then all the bees got some virus and died which was horribly disappointing to them.
ReplyDeleteYour daffodils are early alright. Everything is still brown here.
ReplyDeleteBusy time of year for bees! Or should I say "bzzzzzzy"?
ReplyDeleteSo glad you were able to find a copy of "Buzz" - that was fast work on your part!
ReplyDeleteFor Ms. Moon and others in the US, I highly recommend keeping mason bees (aka blue orchard bees, Osmia spp) instead of honeybees. They don't make honey, but they're native across the entire country, they're superb pollinators (even flying in cold damp weather when honeybees choose to stay home), and they are super easy keepers.
Spring bulbs are balm to the soul.
Chris from Boise
The blooming bulbs bring back sweet memories. We have glorious flowers here, but none of the bulbs I grew up with. And we had at our house in Connecticut. The Vonnegut quote is wonderful. I wish I could have used it in my mother (and myself) 50 years ago!
ReplyDeleteAnything that attracts pollinators is a winner in my garden.
ReplyDeleteIt must depend on the type of morning glory. I have them, they reseed themselves every year. It's a definite love/hate relationship. I thought of keeping bees a couple of decades ago until Mark pointed out I barely had enough time in a day to breathe. He was right about that. No bees for me.
ReplyDeleteI'll have to see if our library has a copy of that book. Wish the daffodils were showing up here but not yet. We did drive by a lawn this morning that was filled with the beautiful blue scilla flowers.
ReplyDelete