The beach was fantastic pippi. Lots of early morning walks on the beach, bike rides, and playing in the water.Thanks for asking. Tammy

Here some pictures of the poor rose bed after I have taken the roses out of this section. In this one you can see the poor wilted shrub rose replanted by the trellis. You can also see some of the roses that I never got around to moving more in the front of the picture. The section to be replanted. Look further down towards the back in this picture and you can see daylily row there in the back. The view of the section to be planted from the other way. I need to do some prunning of the shrubrow that I have planted accross from this rose bed as some of the shrubs have grown much taller than I thought they could. Still, most of the shade come from the branches of my neighbors cutleaf maple that overhang the property. I have spoken to him about trimming the branches back and its on the project list. He wants to have the tree guy come and thin the tree so that more light comes thru underneath on his property and I would pay the guy at the same time to take back those branches hanging over. Pays to get along well with your neighbors. I am still working on the placement of the little roses but am stuck mostly inside today as I have some work that will take a long time that absolutely has to be done today.

Oh I love to see the bees on the roses or any other flower. LOL Can you tell I have spring fever? Great pic, thanks. Valerie

smorz--there are several ways to beat the bees to the pollen so you can make the crosses you want without risking the wrath of the bumble bees. The easiest is to put a small mesh bag over a single flower on each plant you want to use to cross the night before you expect it to open. This prevents any pollinators from reaching it before you do. Slightly more work, but equally efficient, is to select the not quite open flowers you wish to use and carefully remove the tepals (this is what hosta have, rather than petals). This leaves the stamen, which are the multiple male parts bearing the pollen, and the stigma, which is the female part at the end of the long style, usually extending past the pollen bearing stamen. Once the tepals are gone, there is nothing to attract a pollinator to that particular flower, since it's not actually a flower anymore. If a flower is going to be the pod parent, you should also remove the stamen at this point, or at least the pollen bearing heads to limit the chances of any pollen reaching the stigma. Once you have made your crosses, if you used the bagging method, you will want to keep the bag on that flower until the stigma/style is gone, otherwise pollinators can come in right behind you and make their own crosses. With the removal of tepals, it is not necessary to bag, but you might want to tag the specific flowers that you pollinated. I am pleased to again have a good number of bumble bees and other types of bees in my garden after the massive die off of recent years. I find that if I move very slowly, stop completely when one decides to check me out, and make no sudden movements, they tolerate me quite well. Be aware that bumble bees nest in the ground, and if you disturb them by digging in their nest area, they will resent it and act accordingly.