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Bee-centric Start to the Year

While you might consider April to be well past the time to talk about starting the year, spring is the real start of my gardening.  That's what matters, right?  My true test of spring is whether we begin to see bee activity in our landscapes, and the garden is literally buzzing!


This year, my bee activity never stopped as we worked to get Austin over the finish line in becoming a Bee City USA.  The City Council passed the needed resolution, and it's all now official.  Now we hunker down again, thinking of projects for the coming year that will allow us to re-certify.  Even so, it feels great to have accomplished this amazing result with a group of hard working strangers who've become friends over the past two years.

To fill in the gaps in my knowledge of native bees, I'm taking a six week course on bumble bees.  I thought I knew something about bumbles before this, but find myself thinking instead how very much I didn't know.  I love it!  I'm also taking Beekeeping 101 from the wonderful Molly Keck, an Extension entomologist in San Antonio.  I thought most of the class would be different speakers coming in to speak to us, but no!  Molly is a thoroughly experienced beekeeper who has been able to shepherd our class from suits to nucs to Ag exemptions on property taxes.  She gives us the pros and cons of most of the options a beginning beekeeper would face.  Not only that, she never reads her PowerPoint slides (a major irritant for me is when the speaker acts as if their audience full of adults can't read!)

It's not really my news to share, but we have a wedding to plan and pull off, with family coming from both coasts and a brand new baby to cuddle.  My husband's family's first great grandbaby was born earlier this year and we can't wait to meet him.

There's barely time to recover our strength and head to Madison WI for the first Garden Bloggers Fling since the pandemic caused it to be cancelled in 2020.  What an absolute joy it's going to be to hang out in beautiful gardens with some of  my closest friends in the world.

What are YOU looking forward to this Spring?


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