Bolting and Bees

Happy Independence day, four people from facebook who read my blog! Every time I log onto blogger and see I have one follower I get all excited only to suddenly recall that I followed myself early on when I was figuring out how everything worked. *le sigh* Moving on...
The bees are back!

While this might have caused me a great deal of panic two years ago, gardening has brought me to peace with my bee brethren (or presumably mostly sistren). This last cold week, leading up to the nasty heat I wrote about, I noticed a conspicuous lack of buzzing in my patch. This is a problem, as several things are blooming right now, and I know that bee activity is essential to getting fruit from my plants. The weather heated up so much that the bees decided to stick it out and didn't show up again until things cooled down over the holiday weekend. I was excited to get them back, even the big scary wasps, and comforted at the sight of my friend, I call it Bumbledore.

When I started to call it that, I felt incredibly clever and cutesy. And then the internet informed me that the word 'Dumbledore' comes from another word for Bumblebee. So much for my originality. The internet also informed me that my big/little friend here is a member of an endangered species, which makes seeing him wriggle around in every single one of my rose blossoms a special treat.

In other news, the lettuce is making a run for it. You may or may not have seen it in the background of the status shots, but we've gotten a good crop of lettuce this year. I planted it behind the broccoli and the chives and the dianthus to keep it shaded and cool. Despite the presence of rabbits and squirrels all over our yard, the lettuce has given us a number of salads and quite a few sandwiches and generally paid for itself. 

But now it's just getting cheeky, and has decided to bolt. What started out as a six inch plant is now pushing two feet tall, and kind of resembles the 'bamboo' poles we made out of newspaper as a kid, with the lettuce leaves getting further and further spread out as it grows. I'm allowing it to bolt, even though many gardeners might tell me to take it out and plant something else in its place, because I'm hoping for the seed and flowers described in Grow Great Grub, one of my favorite gardening books this season. I'll let you know how that works out, and show pictures if they turn out as "Seuss-like" as that author promises.