Oak Meadows Bee Garden

 The Environmental Youth Alliance is creating a pollinator corridor in Vancouver. One of the sites is here at Oak Meadow Park. This is a perfect place for native plants that bumble bees love.

 Erin Udal is working with a group of volunteers to monitor bee activity in Vancouver from June through September. This summer the EYA is also creating new bee gardens in four locations.

The placing of the pots: an important and serious ritual.

 The plants they chose include Oregon grape, currants, roses, camas lilies, lily of the valley, brown-eyed Susans, lupins and foxgloves.

There's also a bee nesting site. This square is filled with the kind of soil that ground-dwelling bees tunnel into to make their nests. The soil will be left undisturbed so the bees can do their thing without humans blundering in and digging up their homes.

 Here are the fabulous diggin' women who edged the garden and planted the bushes and bulbs.

 The plants will bush out and fill up the space. In the mean time we were tossing around some ideas for ground cover to keep out the weeds and provide even more blossoms.

Thanks so much to the folks at EYA for supporting our bees!

Leapin' Lupins!

I am really excited about the new bee gardens project that EYA is creating. I decided to pop out to Oak Meadows Park adjacent to VanDusen Gardens to help plant a bee garden. The park has a lovely natural meadow feel to it. Here we are lookin' at lupins.

 Lupins are a plant much loved by bumble bees. Here you can see the playing fields of Eric Hamber High School to the north of the park.

I was watching a little bumble bee peacefully pollinating a lupin and a bright neon yellow crab spider popped out and grabbed the bumble bee.

Some crab spiders can actually change color to mimic the flower. I should have opened up a blossom so we could see what color the interior looks like.

Needless to say, this poor bee didn't see what was coming and he was zapped with venom. The spider will take the bee to a convenient perch and suck it dry. Bye bye bee.

Harvesting Willow with Angels

The sunflower stalks are dry and the seed heads are spent. It is the time of year to clear out some of the dead growth to make way for new shoots. Last Friday I carefully broke up the sunflower stalks and put them on a compost pile where the insects inside the stems can continue hibernating until the weather warms up. It is unseasonably warm right now. We are at least three weeks ahead of where we were last year.

I came to the Means of Production garden to harvest the willow with the EYA and Ruth and her group of mentally challenged adults she cares for in North Vancouver. Gardening is a big part of their life and they do really good work. Most of the group is (frankly) more focused and productive than I am. I'm out of practice from having the winter off and I spend time dilly-dallying about and enjoying the weather. I give some sunflower stalks to one of the guys to break up and he keeps coming and putting his forehead really close to mine in for a unique greeting. He makes me smile.

Ruth is Swiss, with intensely beautiful blue eyes. She is a biodynamic farmer and a eurythmy instructor. Eurythmy is a movement system that incorporates phonetics with movement. One of the men with Downs does a demonstration for me with fluid, graceful gestures. Ruth talks about the people in her care with reverence, as if they have a special relationship to the Divine, and she really believes that gardening is the best way for them to become a creative community. She talks passionately about the way that the energy of a garden can be a healing influence on a local and global scale.

So why should Ruth's program get funding cuts? Who would have the shortsightedness to fail to acknowledge the work of someone who is one of our society's treasures? Bloody hell, what can I say? These cuts are driving me mad.

These are the stumps of the yellow willow after they've been harvested. The green willow and the black willow are preferable because they grow nice long straight poles that don't need to have the little branches clipped off. Ruth says the black and green willow have more uses and the yellow willow is more for decorative work.

New growth comes at the base of the sedum in the bee garden. Crocuses are blooming too!

The tea plant is looking very healthy.

Those willow poles are huge!

Here's another shot to show you the scale of the willow.

This brings us to a full circle in the Beespeaker saijiki blog. We can look back to see photos of the willow harvest from last year and the pictures of the big snowstorm during the Christmas of 2008. It's humbling and inspiring to see that nature happens when we make other plans. That's a good thing to remember as we look ahead to another year of programming in the Means of Production Garden.

EYA Beekeeping Interns

A syrphid fly sips at a wabi sabi sunflower.

This year the Environmental Youth Alliance is hosting a program at the MOP community bee hive that teaches youth how to be urban beekeepers. The instructor is Brian Campbell, who is currently available to answer your beekeeping or general bee-related questions care of West Coast Seeds: info(at)westcoastseeds.com.

The interns taught us how to do the waggle dance and sent out foraging bees to find honey sticks and then tell us where they were by dancing. Then we were given a talk about the beekeeper's year, and some reasons why you might want a hive or two in your backyard.

Given that we've had such hot, sunny weather, I'm sure the bees appreciate this custom-made bee bath. (I guess technically, it's more a communal drinking cup.)

Each intern lead an activity or gave a presentation and they even put a frame into the visible hive. The colony had recently lost their queen, but re-queened themselves, so hopefully they will be strong enough to survive the winter. Now is the time of the year to treat bees for mites and do a thorough hive check to see if the bees have enough honey and pollen to survive the winter. By mid-October the weather will be cool enough that the beekeeper won't want the risk of opening the hive and chilling the bees. One thing I learned that is the beekeepers must tip up the back of the hive in the winter so that all the condensation in the hive will flow out the front and prevent mildew from forming.

Garden Gnomad at the MOP Garden

While we met at the Means of Production Garden Lois Klassen showed us her brand new art work called Garden Gnomad. This solar powered mobile unit can take your photo and make a post card that inserts your photo into the frame of another garden Lois has visited. It's really a great way to meet people and form conversations about gardening and growing your own food, which is one of Lois's passions.








Garden Gnomad is coming soon to an event near you! Don't be shy--step up and get your photo taken and join in the fun.

April 15 at MOP: What's in Bloom?

On Wednesday the bumblebees were going crazy over these currant blossoms at the MOP. MOPARRC had a meeting with the EYA staff and we discussed the placement of the two new honeybee hives that will be installed in the garden soon. I can't wait!

Our tea party this Sunday has a pink theme, but yellow was the dominant theme here.


The fruit trees are really starting to bloom now.

These hanging blossoms are Indian Plum.





The plum trees along seventh are just starting to fade.