Looking Good, Plants, Looking Good!

  With all the rain of late, it seems that the yard has its sights set on becoming a rainforest.  I guess every kid has to have a goal for when it becomes an adult so the garden must feel that it has every right to become whatever it wants when it grows up.   The backyard especially has become lush with new growth.  Weekly trimming with the snips has had little effect on the plants.  They are determined!

  This afternoon, a short stroll through the garden on the north side of the house brought delight as the false indigo was blooming right alongside of the red buckeye.  Both small shrubs were beautifully adorned with blooms...the buckeye with red and the false indigo with a deep, deep purple.  The exciting part was seeing just how many honeybees were visiting the blooms!  Hundreds of bees were busy collecting pollen from the shrubs.  Somewhere nearby there has to be a honeybee hive.  How fun would it be to find that wild hive and urge them to come live in the garden!

  While I have no knowledge of any problems with the false indigo, I have heard rumors that buckeye is not the best for bees.  Skuttlebutt has it that the toxins in the seeds are also in the blooms and can eventually cause problems for the honeybees.  It seems that bees (and most other critters) are smarter than humans when it comes to knowing what is safe for them to eat.  Since the buckeyes grow wild here, there is no reason for me to worry.  For that matter, both the buckeye tree and the false indigo were dug from the creek bed so I feel that neither will harm the local critters by being in my yard.  Besides!  They look rather pretty!