Mary Beth: Winter is coming, I think, and even though the weather continues to be unusually warm for this time of year, I’ve been getting the bees ready.

So, what about the bees? Every time I tell someone that Ray and I are moving back to Colorado (Ch, Ch, Changes), I hear this question. I’ll say, “We’re leaving.” and then, wait for it, wait for it…a look of dismay and “What about the bees?!” Of course it’s logical, but I’ve been a little surprised and amused that the fate of my bees worries them. On the other hand it’s nice that my friends and readers have become so engrossed in this story that one of their first thoughts is for the bees.

So here is the answer.

Out of the three hives that I ended up with after the swarm season, the Top Bar Hive is the only one that survived.

The Hippie Shack

For some reason the other two lost their queens after they swarmed (read about it here and here) and I ended up shaking out the remaining bees in front of the TBH in hopes that they would be accepted into the hive. Losing the Blue and Green hives made me very sad — I was surprised by how much I’ve come to love my bees.

As for the Hippie Shack (named in honor of the laid-back nature of these bees), I checked it recently and it didn’t have as much honey as I thought it should. I think the hive was being robbed. I put an entrance reducer in to make the the hole smaller to give the guard bees less area to defend. Now, even with the warm weather prolonging the season, I’m worried that they won’t have time to store enough food to make it through the winter.

Since Ray and I decided to leave after the holidays, I’ve been trying to figure out how to leave the bees with enough food. I researched fondant ‘bee candy’ and it seemed like a good solution, so I made a frame to hold it and placed that in the hive.

This small frame holds 5 pounds of sugar fondant!

Another good thing about the bee candy is it won’t cause the moisture problems inside the hive that the sugar syrup did in the early spring. I placed the fondant between the false back and the last comb hoping it wouldn’t attract any more robber bees.

I hope the warm weather will last long enough to let them build up their supplies. Every day they’ve been coming in with a lot of pollen, which is a very good thing.

Dandelions and the last of the aster are blooming, so I think this is where they are getting the bright orange pollen.

Another sign that the bees are preparing for winter is each day a few more drones have been getting kicked out of the hive. I watched this play out one day — those girls are ruthless!

Poor drone!

One poor male was pulled by his leg and tossed out like yesterday’s paper. It’s a cruel, cruel world my friends, but there is not enough to go around in winter for lazy freeloaders.

I moved the hive from it’s original spot so it will get maximum sun exposure all winter. This should allow the bees to break cluster on sunny winter days.

I also wrapped the hive to give it a little more insulation and to keep the wind out. Now it’s up to the bees. Other than a few more feedings before we leave for Colorado, my girls are on their own until March.

You may wonder why I haven’t given the hive away. I did consider moving the hive to my friend’s property, but I was afraid if I moved it up the steep, bumpy road to my friend’s house, a comb or two might break off ruining any chance of the bees’ survival. So I decided to leave them where they are on my family’s property. I’ll fly back east in the spring for a visit and check on the bees and I’ve arranged for my beekeeper friends to check on them now and then. Fortunately the TBH needs little maintenance and the bees will take care of themselves.

Becoming a beekeeper has been a wonderful journey. Learning about honeybees opened up new worlds for me, not just the world of honeybees in my garden, but the important roles of all pollinators and how critical every last one of them is. It’s led me to examine the negative impact we’ve all had on our environment. I’ve been reading about the decline of the honeybee from Colony Collapse Disorder — just one of many examples of our carelessness towards our environment. But the good thing is it’s made me more aware of what I’ve been doing.

So, with that new-found awareness, I try to do my part to help by adding native plants to the existing flower gardens. And I’ve decided that I will delay mowing the outer fields until after the first frost to allow time for the last of the butterflies to emerge from their cocoons and to let the wildflowers reseed themselves for next year.

Of course, at the center of it all is the honeybee, the incredible little powerhouse.  If you have not yet read any books on honeybees, you should. Some of the things you learn will astound you.

It’s been a great year even with the loss of two hives and no honey to harvest. And next spring I will have a hive in Colorado with even more challenges — bears, skunks and who knows what else, but I have a plan!

Mary Beth: Is there anything more amazing than a butterfly, especially a monarch? From its very beginning as a tiny larva, to the chrysalis, to the magnificent winged creature migrating thousands of miles to begin the cycle anew, there isn’t a moment of its life cycle that isn’t breathtakingly beautiful.

Swamp Milkweed grows wild on the back slope of my garden and for the past three years I’ve been encouraging it to expand. It provides food for my honeybees and for the monarch butterflies that call Block Island home. Both of them love it and, although it threatens to take over the back half of my garden, I’ll keep letting it seed itself because it is a valuable food source for these pollinators (monarchs are second only to bees in that category) and a critical link in the life cycle of the monarch.

Milkweed blossoms in early July

So I provide food and water for the butterflies, and they give back endless hours of fascination and joy — there’s nothing that lifts my heart more than company of the monarchs as I work in my garden.

In a good butterfly year, the elm trees that separate the garden from the rest of the property will be draped in monarchs, though we haven’t seen this phenomenon for some years now. Wondering why they always come back to that spot, I did a little research and found out that some scientists have speculated that the monarchs might leave a scent on the trees that attracts the next generation.

All summer I watched for signs of the monarchs. First there were the little larvae.

Then they fattened up and became plump caterpillars hungrily munching great chunks of milkweed. (Honestly, between watching the bees and the butterflies, it’s amazing I got any work done.)

Hungry caterpillars

Soon milkweed city grew quiet and I started to search for the chrysalis. And I searched and searched. I’d almost given up on that mid-September day when I was sitting in the garden eating grapes. Suddenly a small green capsule caught my eye.

The chrysalis was hard to spot

I kept a close watch on the chrysalis for the next couple of weeks.

Almost ready to hatch

Gradually it turned dark and I could more clearly see the butterfly folded up inside. I knew it would hatch very soon, so I made sure I always had my camera with me at all times so I wouldn’t miss the big event.

The next day the sky opened up. As it had all summer, it rained buckets.  Suddenly, in between downpours, the sun burst through the clouds. I grabbed my camera and ran for the garden. Surely the butterfly wouldn’t hatch in this foul weather.

Minus its inhabitant, but still beautiful

The female monarch — newly hatched and drying her wings

A magnificent creature — her wing webbing is thicker and she lacks the black spot on each of her hind wings that mark the male butterfly

I missed the hatching, but got beautiful pictures of the minutes-old butterfly. This gorgeous creature, the fourth and longest-lived generation of this season’s monarchs, is on her way to Mexico now. She’ll spend the winter there, reproduce, and finally die.

Soon she'll be off on her long journey

Vaya con Dios little butterfly. Send your babies back to my garden!

P.S. See our Resources page for links to lots of monarch butterfly information, including how you can make your garden more monarch-friendly.

Barbara: I got a call this morning from Mary Beth directing me to Garden Rant blog. Today’s guest rant, “Who cares about honeybees, anyway?” by Xris, the Flatbush Gardener had gotten her all worked up, and rightly so. As I read it, I could feel my blood pressure rising. This rant, by someone who is mostly on the right side of issues we care about, had such a flip, dismissive attitude towards honeybees and CCD that we could barely contain ourselves.

So what’s a blogger to do when she’s spittin’ mad? Well, blog, of course. So here’s our rant — minus the typos in our original comment on the GR site — about today’s Garden Rant rant. (That’s a lotta rantin’!)

“While we agree with the idea of supporting native pollinators, we strongly disagree with Xris’ shortsighted dismissal of the importance of the honeybee which seems to be based on the notion that it is not part of the ecosystem and therefore expendable. Really?! Though not a native species, honeybees have been a part of the ecosystem (which is the relationship of living organisms and the environment), like it or not, since the colonists arrived.

CCD is important not only because it’s killing an irreplaceable agricultural asset, but because it’s a symptom of a greater problem. Honeybees are essentially the “canary in the coal mine”. They are in trouble because they are treated and managed as livestock — fed cheap, non-nutritious HFCs, trucked across the country, worked under extremely stressful conditions, and then dosed with chemical cocktails to eliminate parasites that have taken advantage of their weakened state. This mentality has gotten us into serious trouble with more than honeybees, as a tour of any feedlot will show.

Because of the CCD “alarmists”, scientists have discovered that our unsustainable practices, such as chemical pesticide usage and mono-cropping, have led to the die-off of native species as well — a fact that might have gone unnoticed until it was too late as it did in an area of China that was so overdosed with pesticides that the local population must HAND POLLINATE crops or starve.

Our use of honeybees as pollinators is not the problem. The problem is how we treat them and the rest of the ecosystem as if it were there only for our benefit. Until we realize that we are a small part of the bigger picture and treat the earth and all its creatures as if they matter and with respect for their needs, we are in danger of killing the very things that keep us alive.”

At this point, having gotten it off our chests, we might feel better, except that we don’t. It all matters, every last little bit and time is running short, people. Every one of us needs to give a crap and DO SOMETHING! So, yes, create hedgerows and other habitats for pollinators, keep some hives, plant native species and use organics for pest control. But, please don’t downplay the issue of honeybee disapperance and Colony Collapse Disorder as old news or as not important. The stakes are too high.

Mary Beth and Barbara

Mary Beth: As promised, here are more pictures of the lovely creatures that will take up residence in your garden when you stop using pesticides. I’ve really enjoyed the variety of bugs that have shared my garden this summer.

What a magnificent creature! The mantis is the stuff of nightmares — fierce and merciless.

And then there's this funny-looking guy. The spotted cucumber beetle is a pollinator, but it carries bacterial wilt in its gut and can cause a lot of damage in your garden.

Dragonfly

Another one – the color amazes me.

A sweat bee, I think.

A syrphid fly.

I really hit the jackpot a few days ago, though. I found a monarch butterfly chrysalis and I was lucky enough to have my camera on hand when the butterfly emerged! I’ll post the photos this weekend.

Mary Beth & Barbara: Here’s another post where we’re going to let the pictures tell the story. All we really want to say is that the rewards for not using chemical pesticides are many. Some are obvious, like just knowing that you’re not adding to the chemical load in the environment. Others are more subtle and you’ll have to slow down and pay attention to recognize them. (That’s a good thing all by itself.)

Since becoming organic gardeners, we have noticed a marked increase of wildlife in our gardens, mostly for the better. Sure you might get a few more pesky bugs, but for the most part you’ll be getting a lot more of the good guys who will help you keep those pests under control. We’ve seen lizards and insect-eating birds in Barbara’s garden and  frogs, dragonflies, butterflies, and all kinds of bees in Mary Beth’s garden.

If you take a seat in your garden and stay still for a while, you’ll begin to notice a world of activity and see some of the benefits of organic gardening for yourself.

This honeybee looks like she's high on pollen. Do we need to give this an R rating?

Hang on little peeper!

Now you're ok.

Bumble bee butt! Makes me laugh every time I look at it.

This little crab spider found the perfect setting to show off her beautiful chartreuse hue.

Be sure and check back early next week when we’ll have more photos of our garden creatures to share with you.

Barbara: I was looking forward to this past Saturday morning ever since I read that the University of California Cooperative Extension Master Gardeners would be presenting a fall vegetable workshop at the Farm and Food Lab in the Great Park. Irvine is something of a wasteland when it comes to these sorts of things, so the fact that there was a workshop like this surprised me.

The second surprise was the Farm and Food Lab. I was truly amazed when I laid eyes on it. I’d heard that there was something agricultural happening in Orange County’s Great Park, but more than this I did not know. Well, turns out that there’s a not-quite-year-old, 2-acre farm that has produced more than 6 tons of organic row crops that have been donated to local food banks!

This 2-acre plot will be substantially expanded in the coming months.

And next to this very productive field are beautiful raised beds brimming with fruits, vegetables and ornamentals, each planted in keeping with a theme — a pizza garden, fruit salad garden, a Native American garden, etc.

Orange County gardeners explore the Food and Farm Lab.

In the midst of this delightful setting the Park crew set up a large tent for the lecture. And that brings us to the next, and perhaps biggest, surprise. The tent wasn’t big enough to accommodate all the people that showed up! In my wildest dreams I wouldn’t have imagined that more than 20 people or so would come, but there were at least triple that number. Bring me my smelling salts!

Kay Havens, a certified Master Gardener, gave a great presentation. It was informative, funny and full of tips for growing fall crops in containers and small gardens. Afterward, I spoke to Tom Larson, chief landscape and farming consultant, who told me that there are plans for a much larger farm and a community garden.

Things are looking up in OC, people! If you’ve lived in Orange County for as long as I have, you too would be pinching yourself to make sure this wasn’t a dream. I think I’ll stick around to see what happens next!

P.S. There are four more workshops scheduled. See the Great Park site for more information. And come to the next one — you won’t be disappointed.

Barbara: Marybeth and I were so excited, I mean REALLY excited, to learn that our blog has been nominated as a 2009 Blotanical Awards regional finalist in the Best Rhode Island Blog category. Thanks to everyone who voted for us in the initial round.

Now we have a favor to ask of all our loyal readers. Can you guess what it is? Oh! You’re all so smart! Yes, we would be so grateful if you would take a few minutes to go to the Blotanical website and vote for our blog. There’s only a day and a half left to cast your vote, so hurry on over. And, while you’re at it, check out some of the other great blogs that are up for awards.

Mary Beth: I love this time of year. It’s a time when I like to make a few changes in the garden beds. Some work, some don’t and, while the main bones of the garden will always be the same, it’s fun to have a few surprises to look forward to the next year. And changes here and there are especially nice for those of us who like to take photographs.

Today I dug up one of my favorite plants, the Blue Star Amsonia. This plant looks especially good contrasted with the red poppies that grow next to it (it’s one of my favorite photo subjects) but, it got too big and began to take over the bed.

Red Poppy and Blue Star Amsonia

So I moved it, leaving behind an Amsonia seedling I found to keep the poppies company. This also gave my father’s pretty yellow rose some room to be seen. In the Amsonia’s place I transplanted a white coneflower, a dozen crocosmia ‘lucifer’, and a clump of Red Switch Grass that has beautiful leaves blushed with red. I think this combo will look amazing with Dad’s yellow rose and a delicate white rose, ‘Darlow’s Enigma’, that’s nearby. It will also give the bed color throughout the entire season which it lacks this time of year. I planted the Amsonia on the other end of the bed with the yellow daylilies and blue Japanese iris, where I think it will look especially nice and give me more pretty combos to photograph.

I’m planning on more garden changes, but right now they are still swirling around my brain. I’m one of those gardeners who doesn’t plan on paper. The ideas pop in my head while I’m having a bout of insomnia, while I’m working in other people’s gardens, or while weeding in one of my beds. When things start to come together and the picture I’m painting in my head seems right, I’ll  grab my shovel and start creating a new work of art.

Speaking of changes, this fall will be extra busy for me because Ray and I have decided that we won’t be coming back to live on Block Island next year. We’re going back to our home in Colorado and will stay there year round. It’s a very bittersweet time for us. I’m very excited about living all four seasons in the mountains and working in my Colorado gardens again after 5 years on Block Island, but heartbroken to leave this special garden that’s filled with so many wonderful memories.

Laying out the vegetable garden ...

The vegetable garden five years later.

The flower bed in front of the vegetable garden...

And five years later.

In spite of leaving so much behind, I know that these changes will be good for us. I can feel it. And my Colorado garden, which has endured on it’s own all these years, is calling me.

Mary Beth: Ray and I were under the weather on Labor Day weekend, so I decided  to make a nutritious soup using all the wonderful vegetables in my garden. As I was picking the ingredients for the soup, I was thinking about the article I read on the Garden Rant blog where the author mentions the occasional bug she may unknowingly serve her family. It made me chuckle, but it made me buck up too — if I don’t eat that kale that looks like it was blasted by buckshot, then what’s the sense of having an organic garden?! So I grabbed a handful of that too. I had to triple wash it and really rub those leaves to get rid of the bugs. I won’t go into details, but it wasn’t pretty.

Anyway, I got through it and the soup was delicious. And maybe, just maybe, the missed bug or two were actually the medicine we needed to get better!

Fresh from the garden

Garden Vegetable Soup with Barley (bugs optional!)

• 1 bunch kale, with stems, roughly chopped  (I started throwing the entire kale leaves, stems and all, in the soup when I read my niece Kristin’s blog. She has a great blog on nutrition and food. You can read about the benefits and healing properties of food at foodbykristin.)
• 1 bunch Swiss chard, with stems, roughly chopped
• 2 large beets with their greens, beets cubed, greens, with stems, chopped
• 1 medium Trombetta squash, sliced 1/4″ thick
• 2 large yellow tomatoes, cubed
• 3 Roma tomatoes, cubed
• 1 cup cherry tomatoes, cubed
• 1 large leek, chopped
• 1 large carrot, chopped
• handful of basil, roughly chopped
• 3 small onions, chopped
• lots of garlic, smashed
• oregano, sage, parsley, sage, tarragon, rosemary — whatever you have on hand
• Barley about 1/4 cup, or more
• filtered water
• olive oil
• sea salt and pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon of red pepper flakes

Saute garlic and onions in olive oil until tender. Throw in rest of veggies and saute until tender. Add basil, sea salt, pepper and red pepper flakes. Stir. Add water, about 4 – 5 cups, and barley. Bring to a boil. Add the fresh herbs. Simmer for about 30 minutes.

I don’t worry about too much about measuring ingredients for the soup. I just add whatever is ripe in the garden, season with lots of fresh herbs, add salt and pepper and add enough water to make plenty of broth. Whatever ingredients I use, it always makes a thick delicious broth and it’s really good for you. Just don’t look too closely… no, seriously I got them all!

Mary Beth: Oh how wonderful it is to be standing in the garden looking at those beautiful tomatoes, feeling proud of my babies and thinking of all the delicious meals I’m going to make. Mmm.

Almost ready to harvest

Wait! Something catches my eye. WTF?! Something is chewing big chunks of my plants! My tomatoes!

A shiver runs down my spine as I spot the culprit. A big, fat green monster — the dreaded Tomato Hornworm! And once again the game is on as I become obsessed with finding the beasts.

Hiding in plain sight. Those little nubby feet are strong!

They are the masters of camouflage so it takes a bit of practice to spot them. The best way to find them is to look for their poop; little black droppings on the leaves below where they munch. I track up the plant from the poop. Looking for the damage, squinting, concentrating…yes! Gotcha!!

Warning, the first time you see one of these guys it’s a bit freaky, they’re huge and kind of scary looking. Touching one will be the last thing you’ll want to do, but be fearless and get rid of it. And know that where there is one, there are others. So check each and every one of your plants carefully. Tomato Hornworms are eating machines that will devastate your plants in a day or two.

Look at all those little "eyes"! Eww!

I pull the pest off the plant (they have quite a grip) and throw it over the fence, or if I’m feeling ruthless I let the dogs have a go with it (hilarious, but not pretty). They’re way to big to squish, so I mostly take the coward’s way out and toss them as far as I can hoping that the birds will find them. Weird as it sounds it’s very satisfying to find those buggers.

So if you’ve been wondering what’s been eating your tomato plants, here is the likeliest suspect.

P.S. Technically these are Tobacco Hornworms, but most people identify them as Tomato Hornworms. They are the larvae of the Hummingbird Moth. The caterpillars can grow to 4 inches in length and are easiest to spot in the early morning or at dusk when the temperature is cooler. They’ll also eat potato plants, eggplants, and peppers. Here are a couple of links to more info — Colorado State Master Gardener and University of Minnesota.