signs of spring

peonies are one of the early signs of spring.  the crowns send out new growth and if you are lucky like us, the seed heads you left on the plants last year drop seeds all over and new plants sprout in your lawn.

darry gathered a bunch of them and relocated them to a different area of the yard and in a year or two, we may have flowers.

 grape hyacinth

 peach blossoms

 pink hellebores

 we have filled all of the garden beds with plants or seeds and now we wait for the chance to harvest the vegetables.  the large plants are those that overwintered.  from the bottom-walking onions, left-kale, top right-red cabbage and center right-red russian kale.

 on the top is the kale which was grown from seeds given to us by the folks at long hungry creek farm which is the farm run by jeff poppen, the barefoot farmer.  the bottom is a close up of the red russian kale.

 red cabbage

and one of our favorites, lilacs.

welcome spring!

we had a chance to get into the hive, it was also time to medicate the bees. it is important to treat them and stay ahead of the varroa mites and tracheal mites. varroa mites are visible to the eye and happily, we didn't see any-not a single one! however, tracheal mites live in the tracheas of the bees and are not visible so you have to watch behavior to find signs of them. we are pretty sure that they are not having issues with them either. we saw lots of stored honey and both capped and uncapped brood! we will be putting on the honey supers soon and come summer, we will have honey for our use.