Bees wonderful bees

The past few days I have been spending a lot of time just sitting in the garden observing all the wildlife coming and going. A few months ago you would have been hard pressed to find anything other than some spider mites, earwigs and mosquitos. Now there are tons of bees, butterflies, beetles and more, just cruising around, enjoying the lovely late summer flowers. The woodpeckers have also been very busy discovering all the anthills in the yard. I actually find it very comforting to find their holes in the ground every morning, I guess it just feels like the universe is responding to our very conscious decisions in the garden.

This is a picture os one of my favorite bee species in the area. I'm not quite sure of the exact name but I do know that it's native to Colorado and is a stingless bee. I just love how beautiful it is, the iridescent head and thorax are pretty breathtaking. The cosmo is a bit on the large side, about 4" or so across, so as you may be able to imagine the bees are quite small. We are thinking about putting out some bundles or old logs for them to nest in, the more support we can offer the pollinators the better! There are also tons of honey bees and bumble bees flying around but they just aren't quite as interesting as these little green bees, at least not to me right now anyway.

I also finally read "One straw revolution" by Masanobu Fukuoka, which is quite a wonderful book. I have to say that my favorite part was that the natural farming methods he uses were very similar to what we decided to do in our yard, mainly because it seemed like that's how the plants would be happiest growing. I took a few shots of our fledgling winter garden. I planted just about a month ago but the ground is so hard and has such a high percentage of clay the plants find it difficult to grow, so most of them are rather small and a few just germinated though they have been in the ground for weeks.

Yay for broccoli! I am super excited about this coming up. It was so hot after I planted I was afraid I fried all of the heat sensitive seedlings but luckily all of the grass and cheeseweed growing in the garden area provided just enough ground cover and shade to allow seeds to sprout. I am really looking forward to some homegrown broccoli. If you look closely you may be able to see the chard and kale sprouts that are coming up just to the left of the broccoli.

You can see our lovely winter squash slowly creeping it's way over the rows of winter greens. Notice the lower right has lots of grass, cheese weed and most importantly baby romaine. In the background against the brick wall are some of our beautiful sunflowers, eagerly soaking up the fall rays. We don't worry about grasses or weeds in any of the beds. They are bringing much needed life to the soil and create lots of leaf litter and shade for the other plants. If it seems as if the grass is too long and it's going to suffocate the sprouts I gently pull off the top few inches of grass blades, leaving the root system and soil intact. This contributes to a happy garden with plenty of organic matter in the soil and lots of plants to distract possible predatory insects.

 I almost forgot to mention what all those odd looking branches are, just resting on the soil. When I seeded the bed I cut down a bunch of the lamb's quarters from the other side of our yard and used them as fresh mulch. The soft leaves break down quickly and the branchy stalks keep the neighborhood cats from pooping in the garden. The leaves help to shade the soil, keeping water longer, and add much needed nutrients. Once all the leaves are gone and the stalks are dried out I usually remove them and add them to the compost, this year though I may try to build a berry mound and place them inside. I have also found they make great garden stakes. If they weren't so woody I would just leave them out but in order to properly decompose they really should have full contact with the soil.

Well that's about all for now. I'm heading to the Colorado Permaculture Convergence this weekend which looks to be very very interesting. I will do my best to take notes to give you all a proper write up of the state of permaculture in Colorado. Hope you all are out there creating a more diverse eco-system! Happy Fall!