Drift.......

My peas, the tomatoes on the East side of the garden, my cardoon, a couple squash and the bachelor buttons have suffered from the *drift* of whatever Monsanto-Brand herbicide was in Rudy's sprayer.  So I suffered the loss of bees and a small part of the garden.  I calmed myself by organizing my beehives and painting the new/used hives given to me by friends/acquaintances getting out of the bee business.  I needed to do something nice for my surviving bees.  I painted the boxes a soft baby blue.  It's paint leftover from the last time my mother-in-law had one of her guest bathrooms painted before she passed away.  I cleaned the boxes, did minor repairs and then slapped on the paint.  I pulled out the frames and did a complete inventory of what I have and what I need.

My sons and my middle daughter came out and checked the bee and garden damage and helped to cheer me up.  Both boys put in call to a couple of their beekeeper contacts and I'll have several new packages of bees by the end of the week.  There's still so much nectar season left, I just don't want to miss a minute of it.  My daughter helped me pull out the plants that were sprayed and then dig out and replace the compost.  My boys kept telling me the herbicide probably didn't kill any of the plants and they'd recover, I had to keep telling them the POINT to my garden was NO chemicals in MY or THEIR food. 



This is INSIDE the Chicken Yard  It's Between the Garden and The Apiary....EVERYTHING was Sprayed and is DEAD: Less than 24 hours...BAD Ju-Ju

Rudy will not be fired.  Rudy and my husband both started farming this ranch together when they were both 15.  My husband's grandfather was alive then and Rudy's father worked for him.  Rudy is a fixture. My mother-in-law had a wonderful flower filled yard that Rudy has always taken care of (we have a home for his family right next door) and my mother-in-law must have owned stock in Monsanto, because she had Rudy use Round-Up by the truckload...so Rudy just figures what was good enough for her should be fine with me. That's one of the reasons we've had a couple run-ins.  I told my husband it needed to be handled first thing tomorrow morning...I can't make Rudy's life miserable...but I can make Big Daddy uncomfortable.

By the way:  A couple months ago I potted up about 15 end-of-the season fruit trees I bought at the local nursery to plant out in the Fall...we'll those babies are going in the ground this week...and Mr. Rudy will be the one planting them--with a shovel.