update on the nice garden

Yes, I'm ignoring the big political news from Minnesota for now. I wanted to talk about my back yard instead.

See some photos of plants, pollinators, and fruit...

Here's the view of my back yard 2 weeks ago. The cup plants were over 2.4m/8ft tall, with the hops not far behind. Since then, the cup plants grew so tall that they leaned over under their own weight, some of them almost horizontal.

Today, after work, I spent time cutting down many of those cups plants, because I needed to plant some raspberry that arrived a day or two ago. I felt slightly guilty with each giant stalk I cut down, disturbing the very many pollinators that were all over them. I cleared only a small enough section for now to get the raspberries into the ground. I'll leave the others a while longer, since they're still putting on fresh new flowers and pollen.

At the section where the new raspberries are planted now, I took this photo of a bee a few days ago. It's at one of the bergamot flowers that was struggling under the shade of the giant cup plants. I kept my hand in the photo for comparison. That's one large bee. It seems much too large for mason bees, so maybe there's an actual honey bee hive somewhere? My yard is full of them right now. Easily 100 or more in my back yard. In the section of my yard with blackberries, there are also cup plants that need to go. On them today, however, is this beauty. With those gorgeous tiger stripes, it obviously has to be some kind of Tiger Swallowtail butterfly, but I can't tell which particular kind yet. I've asked in a Butterfly group on Reddit if someone can tell me more.

And next to that blackberry area is the apricot tree. I pulled my first 3 ripe fruits from it today! Here's a photo of their "good side" that isn't rotted with bug bites. *laugh* I'll have to be quick to get something worth eating before the bugs take them from me.

I know that often my yard doesn't "look" nice at all, but I do slowly get it tamed back to general human standards. These photos show the reasons I love the #Lawns2Legumes program in Minnesota. Keep those pollinators happy, and it benefits humans too by having a healthy ecosystem.