Each April when the Pakistan mulberries are getting fat and dark, the overabundant juice inside each cell is beginning to permeate through the "skin" to the outside world, and thus making the fruit sticky to the touch. That is the time that honeybees converge on the whole berries and gather all the hyper sweet stuff that they can to shuttle back to an active hive. Before then, they gather at the bottoms of the berries that various wasps have already debottomitated and harvest from there. The discerning bees leave the smaller,, externally drier Shangri La and IL Everbearing berries totally alone. In July, the honey bees gather with equal excitement around the eyes of yellow Kadota figs to harvest the thick amber drop of fig syrup that forms when they are ripe. As some of the liquid-filled figs get punctured by wasps, woodpeckers, Mocking birds, etc., the honeybees gather as a group at those opened up figs to harvest the clear syrup. Meanwhile, they leave other less liquidy/less sugary figs alone. Later in Fall, when the fully ripened, sweet Suruga persimmons are busted open by woodpeckers and squirrels, the honeybees gather as a group at those opened up fruit to harvest the cinnamon-flavored, sugar cane sweet, sugar cane tasting Suruga flesh. They leave unpunctured persimmons alone.I sure would like to get to taste their honey......A local, rural area beekeeper just told me that a fellow beekeeper sadly lost the bees in his urban area hives. He blames the piles of now-dead bees on city officials responding to the mountains of mosquito complaints during mosquito overload season. They send out the insecticide spraying trucks in the middle of the night to decrease the population of the blood-loving female skeeters. The news media cite disease potential, phone calls come in, phoners are voters....you get the picture.

yes, there's plenty of water available here. we have a water well for irrigation and even in the driest summer it was always full of water.. and it's only 4ft deep!

Jeri, I'm surprised at how pink Monsieur Tillier is. I had thought it had more of an apricot coloring. At any rate, I'll be able to find out next month when I visit the cemetery, thanks to your description of its beauty. For what it's worth, I've never potted on a band and have not lost a single one by planting it straight into the ground, although there are one or two laggards (the prime example being the infamous Ley's Perpetual). I tend to think it depends on the soil and climate one is gardening in, and I consider myself fortunate that it seems to work for me. By the way, Jeri, thanks for enabling me into IHT. It's blooming for the second time after being in the ground for some months and I love the color. I couldn't have found a better plant for my purple garden area. I have been fertilizing bands that have put on new growth with alfalfa meal. Is this an okay thing to do? I haven't seen any adverse effects but would appreciate others' opinions. Regards, Ingrid

Hi Bev, I have to update my list and hope there is something on it that you would like. It would be nice to have something so lovely blooming at this time of the year. :) I will get it to you asap. Lois