Flight of the bumblebee 🐝

I never thought I’d be so happy to see a bumblebee buzzing beside me, but I suppose that’s where I’m at now in my gardening journey! πŸπŸ˜†

About a week ago, it occurred to me I hadn’t seen any bees in the garden, even though I have plenty of pollinator flowers.

This morning, I was again thinking about the bees because I have a lot of flowers on the cucumbers now.

I started worrying what if the fruit and veggie plants don’t get pollinated (I know we can manually do this, but I’ve been waiting for nature to take its course πŸ˜‰).

And then later this evening, Zaya (5) came running through the front door into the kitchen.

She excitedly yelled, “Mommy! Mommy! I saw a bumblebee! There’s a bumblebee on a white flower in the garden!”

So, everyone rushed out to the garden, and the six of us (me, Travis + 4 children) huddled together to watch this little, fuzzy bumblebee wiggle its tiny behind from flower to flower. πŸπŸ˜„

πŸ’œ XO


Happy Friday

Three things to reflect on in honor of September 11th.

Sunflower Rescue

We found volunteer sunflower sprouts growing in between the sidewalk. It was such a random thing to see that at first I thought they were just weeds.

But as the sprouts continued to grow taller, I inspected their leaves and told Travis, “I think these are sunflowers!” 😲🌻

I didn’t even know sunflowers could grow in such a tight space. Haha! But some plants are known to grow just about anywhere, I suppose. πŸ˜„

I do wonder if we hadn’t of “rescued” the random sunflower sprouts, could they have survived growing in between the sidewalk?

We did have two sprouts that needed more time to grow their roots, so I’ve been giving them some TLC in a repurposed honey jar.

This morning, I checked the sprouts, and one is finally ready to go in a pot of soil. Once it outgrows it’s pot, I will transplant it into a grow bag.

Sunflower sprout I’ve been growing in a repurposed honey jar of water.
Look at that phenomenal root growth! 😲🌻
Grow, baby grow! We’re all “rooting” for you! πŸ˜„

We have five of the volunteer sunflower sprouts currently growing in our garden beds.

They weren’t too happy about being transplanted, but after a few days and some good rainy days, they perked up and are now happy and thriving in the garden!

So, where did the volunteer sunflowers come from? My winter bird feeder! πŸ˜‚

The birds/squirrels must’ve dropped the seeds, and once the weather warmed up, the sunflower seeds germinated! 😲🌻

What makes this sunflower rescue story even funnier is I said I wasn’t going to grow sunflowers this year.

We grew beautiful sunflowers last year, but I didn’t think we’d have the space for it this gardening season because we needed the room for our grow bags.

I guess the sunflowers said, “Make room for us!” πŸ˜‚πŸŒ» #sunflowerswin

πŸ’œ XO

P.S.β€”the feature image is of one of our sunflowers from last year.


Happy Friday!

Four fun things for Friday, including a new art exhibit I’m excited to see.