Strawberries

I got outside a little earlier today and wandered through the garden. To my great delight, I discovered a few strawberry plants were still alive. Not much else going on back there, although Ron said the bees were going crazy earlier in the day. They had sucked down all their sugar water and were apparently enjoying the warm temperatures here in Tulsa this week. After losing a colony two years ago to a combination of varroa mites and cold weather, we wised up and bought a Styrofoam hive. Ron has taken some other precautions as well — he treats the hive with menthol to keep the mites at bay, and he feeds the bees extra sugar water, because it’s a young hive (we just set it up last spring), and the girls can use all the help they can get until they’re a little better established.

While I was in the back yard, I also found a lot of dog poop, so I am adding this to my list of projects for this weekend.

We were originally planning to travel to the Oklahoma Panhandle this weekend, but we decided to save that trip for Memorial Day weekend, when the weather will be a little nicer and I (hopefully) won’t have quite so many projects on my plate.

I’m going to fill up the bird feeder Saturday morning and see who shows up for lunch. We used to get lots of sparrows and cowbirds and a few cardinals and bluejays in Southern Illinois. I don’t know what we’ll see here in Tulsa.

What’s new in your yard? Go take a look. There’s probably more going on out there than you think.

Emily