The Merry Month of May by Sue@Lmu

Saturday May 7th was quite a day we were having the last day of our plant sale and we were getting two packs of bee’s to help make up for the four hive’s we lost over the winter. At about 2pm one of our member’s Marisol heard an amazing sound and looked up and here came this swarm of bee’s. They settled before her eye’s on my deer deterrent swim noodle. Bill calls the noodles my deer attractors. Ha Ha now they are apparently bee attracters. So Bill came about a half hour later with his new bees and was excited to find there was a new swarm to catch and add to our collection. He had just caught a swarm off one of his hive’s the night before and brought them over. So in less than 24 hrs we went from 1 hive to 5 hives. WOW! About two weeks ago our master bee whisperer Junior Snelson whispered a swarm out of the same hive that he found just as they were getting ready to swarm out. We feel really fortunate that our one hive that wintered over has turned into 3 hives and are now hoping they all thrive.


This is just a few of our wonderful members planting the big field last wednesday our biggest planting night. We managed to go way over my hopes of what we could do in one work night. One row of pollinator flowers, 2 rows okra, 1 row cukes, 1 row summer squashes, 3 rows peppers, 1 row tomatilla’s, 4 rows tomatoes, ?16 rows beans, and we cleaned up 6 raised beds and planted them with ground cherries, cabbages, sweet potatoes and tomatoes. Everyone worked so hard together. We were all enchanted with our youngest members and how excited they are about planting the garden and how amazingly helpful and diligent they were. We had three work nights last week and by the end of the week we had planted 2 fields of corn, another field of beans, cleaned up and planted our large tubs with beans, moved mulch into the high tunnels and probably things I’ve forgotten.
Our youngsters working hard!


We’ve been eating massive amounts of lettuce, greens, radishes, asparagus, onions and peas from our early spring plantings. Both our bodies and souls are fed through this wonderful community garden with food, exercise, knowledge and FRIENDSHIPS all of which I’m deeply grateful.