Flowers, fire and bees

The end of June turned hot again and the plants have shot up. Lots of annuals in full flower, like these snap dragons,

The city lifted the fire ban a few weeks ago and I finally managed to burn off the four wheel-barrows of old raspberry canes one evening. Man, they went up fast!

The potatoes are all up and in flower.

Our front, the zucchini plants are also producing flowers and the first fruits of the year.

The mock orange on the south side of the house is in bloom. I spent some time here putting in some new raspberry canes (that were suckering around front into the main garden bed) as well as some perennial violas (red and yellow) and generally cleaning up the overgrown bits.

The main apple tree has lots of apples on it. The dwarf tree has a few and continues to disappoint, year after year.

The most fun is watching the bees. There are at tonne of them this year. Not so many of the honeybees (with stingers) but lots of little pollinator bees.

We hung Jessica's bee house under the deck out back (no activity so far) but the bees are everywhere, especially in the raspberries, tomatoes, and on the marigolds.

This weekend we'll be doing some cleaning up in anticipation of guests. I have a failed wine project to pour out and a bunch of leaves and whatnot to clean up.

Rhubarb, berries, and bees

Apologies for the lack of updates; work got busy! We're just at the end of the peak rhubarb season. Jess has made pies and crisps and I've frozen some for muffins and also to combine with strawberries into pie filling to can (likely mid-July).

The rest of the fruit crops are coming along. It looks like we'll have a good harvest of raspberries this year.

The gooseberries are also almost ready for picking. I'm not sure we'll have enough to jam this year.

The strawberries are also coming along. The recent rainy weather has really helped the entire garden, with the annual vegetables really jumping up with the extra moisture.

Out back, the bees have been frequent visitors in the snap dragon's Jess planted in the old stone planter by the garage.

I spent some time this morning repairing our 20-year-old reel mower. The handle finally broke off due to rust. Four hose clamps put it back into its third decade of service. Which was good a the lawn was a real mess and needed a cropping.

This afternoon I have some weeding to do and then maybe we'll get a mason bee colony that Jess got for Christmas nailed up under the deck. I may also get the food dehydrator out and take some herbs in to dry.