Beginnings

The weather is getting warmer by the day. We are having more sunny days and are going with out jackets more often. The buds are on the trees and bulbs are blooming. It's time to begin the garden. We have major changes in the works so I can't dive right in yet but I can do starts. After many an incident with our starts inside our house I made plans to raise my transplants in the garage. We have a south facing window that would work for seedlings but I decided this year to give the seeds a boost with a warming mat and a grow light. I started four tomato varieties, asparagus and echinacea. None have sprouted yet so I can't say yet if the warming mat and light has made a difference.

I have a confession to make. We lost our bees. Our hives were lost to American Foulbrood. It was crushing. It still breaks my heart. We worked so hard to protect them from pesticide poisoning and wasp predation that when it took hold I couldn't stand the idea that we couldn't help them. It was fast and bad. I've missed my many winged friends. I found a complete hive in our garage that we had been saving for a swarm. Foulbrood is so deadly to bees that the hive needs to be burned. Luckily this single hive was completely unaffected by the disease. It did however fall victim to wax moth so the frames need to be replaced. I gave the hive a new coat of paint and we are going to assemble frames in preparation for a new colony. I'm so excited, it's been too long without the buzz of bees.

I have so many ideas and plans that I've decided to start a planner to keep them all together. Sketches of the garden, grow charts, seed lists, other notes all in one place. I hope that when planning the garden in future years that I can look back at these notes and use them to make the best garden possible.