Happy Birthday Pete - Estero - Drakes Bay

Happy birthday young man.  What a wonderful day!

The Swarm

We've been talking about getting a bee hive, and as soon as you say something like that, coincidences start happening.  Our neighbors had a swarm end up in their front yard!  The whole thing is pretty quick.  Essentially, the hive gets overfull.  The queen leaves, a bunch of bees follow, creating a swarm.  As it turns out, this is their most docile time.  They don't have a hive to protect.  So, the hive moved in next door.  Our neighbors have young children, and responsibly, were going to try to eradicate the insects, until, well, Kirsty stepped in.  Save the bees!! She calls our local bee keeper club, and starts calling numbers until a keeper asks a few questions about: Where is it?  is it accessible?  How big is the swarm?  How long has it been there?  After hoping we had the right answers, they are on their way.  This picture is of the swarm, before the guys arrived.

Here's the beekeeper with his self made bee catcher.  Essentially, on the other end of the box is the same hose, connecting to a shop vac.  The keeper 'vacuums' the hive, sucking the bees into the box.  He knows he has the queen, when the remaining bees start swarming his box.  They said this hive was about 2,500-3,000 bees, a relatively small swarm.  He got nearly every one of them!

August Garden

 The garden has really taken off, and as pretty much every year, it's just beyond anything I would have imagined.  Mostly what's in this picture are all the wild flowers Kirsty planted, and of course the dahlias Gary shared with us.  He needed to thin out his bulb clusters, and Kirsty had them in the garage for weeks if not months.  I thought nothing would come of them, and low and behold, boom.  She stuck them in all sorts of places, and pretty much, they all grew, bigtime.  So many bees, and hummingbirds and everything enjoying it.

 These are more of the wild flowers interspersed with the grasses that were part of the original landscaping.  

 Here you can see the thyme we planted between the stepping stones is really filling in.  It's pretty exciting to see everything growing so well this time of year.

We have a rose bush for each kid.  We had to move two of them, and didn't do it in the best way.  They were dormant for quite a while, and are now showing lots of growth.  Some branches will need to be trimmed back, but yay!! They survived!

 Amazing, the backyard is so filled in with so many flowers and stuff.

 Below the flowers, I have 3 tiers of vegetable garden.  I've got to do a better job with the planning, we just get starts, and seeds, and throw them in, and now, it's non-stop, coming up everywhere.  The big thing now is all the squash, zucchini and so on.  I'm also getting cucumbers, Japanese and yellows.  Both are really tasty, and not bitter like I've had before.  Oh, the green beans are coming in fast, and so is the chard and basil.  I just can't keep up.  I need to pass more out.

 

I've been getting both white and red chard like crazy.  I really like growing this.  It's huge, super tasty, and you cut it, and it keeps growing.  Behind it is a bunch of arugula I planted.  It took off and I had so much, but it was so spicy hot.  I think it's more of a winter item.  I've been cutting it way back, and it keeps coming up fresh.  I hope I'll get some out of it later in the season.  Also have lots of basil going.  It tastes pretty good, but it's sort of washed out color, not the deep green you want.  Not sure what to do about that.

Here's the green beans.  They've been delicious.  I need to put up some recipes.

 Okay, year 2 for the pear tree.  Nothing last year.  Earlier this year I saw about 7-8 pears set.  I just looked and only see 2 left.  Not sure what's up with that...  

 Here's my newest tier to the garden.  See the pumpkins?!!!  Sweet!! 

We've got pumpkin!

Checking out my blog options.  This is a photo of my pumpkin using my Droid.  Notice no checkerboard.  I like it.  I am using a new blog app, called Blogaway.  Guess google isn't worried about mobile blog apps yet.

I am reeling in so many of these Italian zucchini, crooknecks, Japanese, and lemon cucumbers, and strawberries.  I totally can not keep up.  We're eating white and red chard every day, every way.  My cup floweth over.