Flowers and bees

We've been blessed with mild temperatures lately, and plenty of rain.  The flowers are happy!

Our garden is sprouting, growing and looking good.  I'll spend the morning thinning out the seedlings.

I found 2 strawberries under our lilacs yesterday.  Dang, they were good!

Sadly, our beehive is empty.  Our bees didn't survive the winter.  That is very sad.  We have seen some honeybees flying by though...  We weren't successful in catching the swarms the past few springs, so there are bees around here somewhere.  John and Josh saw some on Riverview Farms property when there were visiting the creek.  I've seen them on the clover in our yard.  We're hoping to get our hive re-established.

There are lots of mason bees and bumblebees around this year.  And those darn red wasps.  John killed a LARGE Japanese hornet here in the greatroom yesterday.  Nasty!  Yellow and black with red highlights!  I'd never seen one before. Not even when I lived in Japan!

I should have chicks hatching in a week or so.  Tuesday next week is what I marked on the calendar.  I hope this batch does better than the last.  1 chick out of 28 is awful!  That little guy is doing well in it's brooder though.  Growing and chirping.

That's a wooden egg I have in there with it.  I found it standing on the egg reaching for a fly yesterday.  Silly little critter.