If You Plant It, They Will Come....

In my last blog post, I mentioned that I had been doing some planting in the garden. When I got home from work today, I took a stroll around the garden so see how things were doing and if anything sustained any damage from the strong storms we had yesterday and last night.

Luckily, there was no damage.  Also, I was thrilled to note that there were several bees enjoying the perennial Salvia.  It didn't take them long to find it :-)

I thought I'd share some photos that I took - they make me so happy :-)

As always, if you click on any of the photos, it will enlarge and you will be able to see the bees more clearly.

Did you know that June 18-24, 2018 has been designated National Pollinator Week? Several states have also proclaimed a State Pollinator Week (Texas hasn't -- yet).

The Pollinator Partnership website has information about pollination for farmers and gardeners, as well as fun stuff - how to build a bee condo, how kids can help pollinators and more.

There's also information about how to contact your governor to ask them to proclaim a State Pollinator Week, including contact information for the various state governors' offices and a sample letter or phone script to get you started.


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

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.