It’s the bees’ garden, we just live in it. We do plant some “magnets” to keep them here, and the bees readily oblige. The garden is one big buzz of the honeybees and the occasional singular humm of the native bumblebees. Most of the herb garden has gone to flower (no biggie) and it literally vibrates all day from the bees. The mint cones are flowering and the bees will camp out and work every single tiny flower. Bees like easy work when they can get it (just like us). We like to think we can taste just a touch of mint in the “forest honey” that comes from our hives. Maybe we can, maybe not. Regardless, the honey tastes good and bees pollinate the plants. It’s good to live in their garden.
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Putney Farm 
Great shots !!
Thanks! Fun to take…
I love flowers! My favorite flowers in the spring are Magnolias, and in the summer are Lilacs! I don’t know why I’m so crazy about tree-flowers, but they’re the bees’ knees for me!
Great post!
Thanks. We love our Magnolias, the only bummer is that they are out for such a short time…but they are beautiful.
I like to work in my breakfast nook. There’s light from 3 windows, it’s close to the stove when I need to “stir occasionally”, I’ve got speakers . . . and nowadays, butterfly bushes out the North and West windows that are buzzing with activity. So far I’ve seen hummingbirds, hummingbird moths, black and tiger swallowtail butterflies, and of course plenty of bees. My favorite is the hummingbird moth, and one of these days I will be in the middle of photographing a plate of food and turn, with camera in hand, and capture the hummingbird moth in action. He’s so thorough and diligent, not flighty like the hummingbirds.
Thank you for lovely photos.
Thanks for the visit…Your kitchen view sounds lovely and I look forward to the pics.
We should do more for the butterflies, we have swallowtails mostly…more hummingbirds (they aren’t all that friendly, they buzz us a lot, and not in nice way).
All of this sounds like summer…
Reblogged this on One Black T-Shirt.
Loveeee the shots!
Thanks!
love this! I’ve been trying to plant to attract bees to my vegetable garden and it’s just not happening right now. I love bees – my gravatar pic and website banner photo was taken in my back yard on a day I discovered my lime tree covered in blossoms and bees 🙂 Love your pictures!!
Glad you like them! FWIW, the lavender, mint and oregano by themselves would keep the bees around and very busy, they love all of them and these herbs grow like weeds…
So nice to see the bees at work. You hear about so many bees dying mysteriously nowadays, it’s great to see you encourage them to come to your flowers.
The sudden bee deaths are a concern, but not so much here…I do gather it is already a big deal in some of our larger Ag areas…glad our “suburban / country” bees are OK…
You “grow” honey, too? (I get that the bees are doing it, but you’re still managing the process.) You are by far the coolest people on the planet! Am so impressed with all that you do.
I love honey and all the different flavors and subtle differences among varieties, but only get to live the life vicariously through folk such as yourself.
Hi,
We are still more famers/gardeners. We cooperate with someone on the bees and honey. We get a good trade on land / plants for pollination / honey. We are learning but couldn’t do the bees without help.
But the flavor of the “forest” and “mountain” honeys are amazing. The honey from our land is very mint / lavender. The stuff from the hills is bitter and “piney” but really, really good.
We will cop to occasionally (OK, often) splurging on a bottle or tupelo honey, one of our favorite foods, just not very “local”.
awww, i love this! we don’t have as many honey bees near our garden, we’ve considered bringing some in and “raising them” (i don’t know the proper term) i’d love having the fresh honey!
Beekeeping is work, but if you have a good garden you can ping local beekeepers to keep hives on your land in exchange for some honey- it is a good deal…
I just love the idea of calling them bee magnets! Just tonight there was a bee near my granddaughters and they started to scream “bee”–clearly I am not doing my job right. I thought we’d covered that topic, and bees were our friends. 🙂 So I’m going to be a bit more intentional and plant a few more bee magnets! We do have a lot of cactus bees, but I’d like some more honey bees.
Thanks- the herb garden, and lavender seem to keep the bees around for most of the warm weather. And as long as we don’t disturb the hives / boxes- we never have an issue.
Lovely pictures. The bees are all over our lavender at the moment and it’s lovely to see.
Thanks. Bees in lavender is one of the more pleasant images we can conjure up…summer captured.
Reblogged this on Students Guide to Healthy Living and commented:
Local markets and gardens are filled with raspberries, appricots, blueberries and peaches right now. Even in the forests the sweet thimble berries are ripe for the picking. This delicious, easy cake from the gorgeous blog Putney Farm, shows a great way to use any combination of fruit. Bake a couple and freeze one for those winter days where the summer sweet fruit is but a warm memory . . . . . . .
Gorgeous photos! 🙂
Thanks!