Hello!
I have missed you. Even more so because I wrote in May, honest, but, with a few inexplicable exceptions, my post did not leave the postbox. It was most frustrating. So after trying for two weeks to get assistance from Google’s blogger help and, failing that, via the blogger community, I asked Mark for help setting up a wordpress blog account. And, as you can see, it is from wordpress that I now transmit.
You know, I won’t comment on weather over the past couple of months, because I forget weather the second it has passed. I know only this, it is much more favorable here in New England than anywhere else in this country, and conceivably outside this country too. I am grateful for what we have; I feel for those enduring life, livelihood, and home threatening weather systems everywhere else.
Peony in my side yard. There were white and rose colored ones in abundance this year
Plants grew abundantly and vibrantly because (I do remember this) days in May and June have been alternating between soaking rain and brilliant sun, in just the right order and just enough. In fact, I have been having backyard greens salads for a month now. Oh the beauty of arugula, sage, lettuce and, most recently, basil, plucked, carried into the house, and eaten. Fresh is a flavor all of its own. There is no other descriptor necessary. You can taste it, and you delight.
The bees swarmed! They overwintered well and so healthily that they made a new queen and a quorum swarmed into the arborvitae about 25-30 feet up. We collected them by perching on the shed roof and, well, you can see from the three photos below.
1. Me on the shed with the pole we extended to dislodge and collect the swarm. A pail on the end of the pole was the intermediary receptacle.
2. Lowering the pail with one of the four iterations it took collect the entire swarm to deposit them in the awaiting nuc.
3. Alex, a fellow bee person, who took the swarm, as he has room in his backyard for another hive, and the nuc into which the swarm moved.
You can see I have missed doing these posts, because I seem unable to stop talking, even the captions are verbose.
So I will stop for now.
I will just add this excerpt from an Emily Dickinson poem (from The Single Hound no. XXXIV)
Nature is what we see,
The Hill, the Afternoon-
Squirrel, Eclipse, the Bumble-bee,
Nay–Nature is Heaven
whereIwonder&why 
Frank is a huge tree planter. Nearly 50 over the past 15 years at the cape! He’s a true tree hugger.
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Hi Judy, Very cool. Hug Frank for me!
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