Friday, October 7, 2011

BEE-utiful

One of the challenges I have had with my garden is with my squash/melon/cucumber family. Apparently whatever it took to pollinate them, I didn't have. Which led to  my whole story of being locked out in the backyard, naked with a paintbrush, trying to pollinate the squash. (That's a whole other story. If you want to know more details, you will have to go back in time in my blog about 1.5 to 2 years) I didn't know what was supposed to be pollinating them that I didn't have. My tomatoes, eggplant, okra, etc all seemed to do fine. I tried looking up on line to see what pollinated them and couldn't find it. All I could find was how to try and pollinate them yourself.
I have been delighted to discover bees in my backyard recently, all over my squash and zucchini! I didn't realize until I saw them, that I hadn't been seeing them before. I don't know if it's because I live in the middle of a big city or the disease that has been plague them, but I haven't seen bees in my yard in a long time.
I can't believe how happy they make me. I'm not sure where they are coming from, but I hope they have found a nice place for a hive in the neighborhood and they stick around. I know a lot of people are afraid of bees, but as a gardener, they make me happy. I wonder if they have found a foreclosed house's yard to live in? Or maybe somewhere between the noise wall and our property wall? I just know I want them to stick around.

The fruit of the bees labor.

Bees at work!

4 comments:

whitesilkpurse said...

I want to read the post about being locked out sans clothing! Send me the link to the post. I must have missed it!

Bandanamom said...

I really like bees too. I'm sure if I was allergic or something, it would be different. And I've been stung a few times in my life (but I think without exception, every time I had stepped on one barefoot). They don't really scare me and I don't freak out when I see them buzzing around. I have them in the back yard pretty frequently buzzing around the flowers and I like to see them. I think my dog Scout is allergic though because occasionaly she gets stung and her face gets really swollen. People usually suprise me when they freak out because there's a bee buzzing around. It's usually just fine. :)

Anonymous said...

We should be just really glad to see them since, if they disappear as they seem to be doing, ALL of our food crops will be in dire trouble!

Anonymous said...

Cool!