Happy May Day!

Well, even though we have had a blanket of fresh snow at the ranch for the past few days...it would appear that spring has finally, grudgingly sprung!  The bulbs are blooming and the hummingbirds have returned - our annual harbinger of spring!  The bulbs have been just beautiful and I so miss their bright flowers when they are gone.

 

Sadly, all of our beehives perished this winter so it is back to the drawing board. I spent the winter attending more classes with wonderful instructors.  Right now three of our hives hives are at a fellow beeks place having new colonies put into them.  They will be brought back to the ranch in June in full swing.  I look forward to receiving these healthy bees from a Colorado breeder who cares very deeply about her bees and knows where all of her queens come from!  Can you imagine?  She is a wealth of information and I am so grateful to have met her.  It is odd to have other pollinators on our flowers and our ranch seems a little empty without our honey bees flying around!

 

We had some luck with propagating a few lavenders this winter.  They are still way too small to plant this spring but hope to keep them alive and thriving until they are ready to put into the fields.  It was an experiment for me this spring to try my hand at propagating - I got some grow lights and gave it a shot.  The way I see it, any plants we get out of it as a result are one less plant that has to be purchased!  Eventually, our hopes are that we will have enough that we will make them available for purchase.  Baby steps.

 

We will be making our annual journey to pick up about 900 plants this coming weekend and will be getting them in the new fields as soon as we can.  This is one of the busiest times of the year for us, always something that needs doing and never enough hours in the day!  But we always make an effort to stop and enjoy the sights and sounds of springtime in the mountains...