Happy Belated Pollinator Week

OK, so I'm a few weeks late in officially recognizing National Pollinator Week, which this year was celebrated from June 16th - 22nd.  But I saw a post of Facebook yesterday asking, "Where are the bees?"   The poster lamented the fact that they had no bees in their garden and they were worried about the consequences.

My iPhoto library helps me keep a record of when I see things in the garden and last year, I seemed to have a lot of carpenter bees and bumble bees in the garden at the end of August and into September.  Not so much in July.

So as I was taking a stroll around the garden this morning, I was pleased to see there were a few bees out there. 

The cucumber vines are covered in flowers and we've already harvested some good sized cukes. This little honey bee seems to be making sure that we get some more cucumbers later in the summer.

 This is better than last year, when we had lots of flowers and not one single cucumber.

Further along on my garden stroll, I noticed some bumble bees on the zinnia - nothing like the numbers we had last August, but it's early days yet :-)  

After a five minute stroll with my camera, the sweat was pouring off me. and that was the end of my foray into the garden for today! I'm glad I was able to find some bees, and hopefully our garden is suiting them and they stick around for the rest of the season.

Words and photographs by Jayne Wilson, Green and Serene, Jayne's Country Garden.