Bees, Beans and Butter

The beans are in the ground. After a month of very settled and sunny weather, the beans are ready for planing out from their first home in the greenhouse. We made sure the ground was good and moist, then popped in runner beans around our mighty construction, with a dwarf variety, called 'butter bean' (confusingly) around the smaller frame.

Genie and I potted up a lot of the herbs, too. 

Some of the rescued strawberry plants went into the shallow stone trough, displacing a thyme plant, which was split and put into the 'rockery'.  I use quotes because the stones are there, but there are no rockery plants - something I want to rectify.

Genie sat on a nettle.

Rob kindly offered me some nematode slug control he had left over in a WhatsApp message. He said he put it on his strawberries. I said we prefer cream.  He treated this old joke with a dignified silence. Quite right.  

There was enough for most of the tender shoots in the veg plot, but I left one strawberry bed as a 'control'.

I was a bit too lazy on Sunday.  There were lots of jobs I could have got on with, but I wanted a proper rest having been somewhat poorly in the second half of the week.

The laurel over the stone seating area is in flower. The bees and furry hoverflies love it. So do I. The scent is subtly spicy, warm, and almost buttery (to my nose) and, with sound of the bees, makes a drowsy combination. The bush is too big for the location now and it leans over the seating area.  I need to think how I can shape it.  Not now though.  Too sleepy.