Flying things

I've decided that giving up on things is often the best way to actually make things happen. A good example is one of our new beehives that my husband bought which is supposed to lure the bees into it without any help from us. He put it in the "ideal" location with the special orchid above it in full flower to attract the bees. Nothing - not one bee went inside. So we put the hive beside the house until we could think of somewhere else to put it - perhaps next spring. Within a week it was buzzing with bees and three weeks later it is still buzzing! We are supposed to check it for bugs every week or so and today was the first time we lifted the lid to check that all is going well. If you click on the close up of the honey comb you can see that although the bees haven't started capping the comb there is a small supply of honey building up. Now we just have to hope that the queen starts laying some eggs to boost the population and the honey supply!
This morning I got up at 5am to try and make a start on reducing the number of weeds in the vegetable garden. By 8am it is already over 30 degrees so an early start is the only way I am likely to get anything done. It is also dark by 7:30pm so not much chance of late evening weeding either. Anyway, a relatively successful morning's work - one thing I rescued were some
butterfly flowers that my daughter and I planted from seed in spring. My work was rewarded by a beautiful butterfly coming to suck some nectar out while we were collecting some of the seeds. I just hope it is not one of the butterflies that will lay eggs that will hatch into the cabbage destroying caterpillars in spring... perhaps I shouldn't have bothered collecting so many seeds!