Still Being Blessed

Those of us who live in Minnesota KNOW how much rain we've had lately!  Pretty much the whole month of June and the early part of July now has been nothing but rain!  We are completely soaked.  In some parts of the state, there is even flooding.  I walked around today and shot some photos of the garden damage sustained this weekend.   We had "the worst storm yet" this past Saturday.  It kept everyone up in the wee hours of the morning, wondering if we were having a tornado.   The next day we woke up to this in my garden:

The torrential rains washed deep ruts in newly planted areas.

Poor little squash plant barely survived!

 

 

These ruts are about 8 inches deep.

Amazingly things are growing, though!  The rest of the garden seems to be OK, and our grapes are loving the warm, wet conditions.

The rest of the garden is doing as well as can be expected.

Check out these gorgeous grape clusters growing!  We'll have plenty of grapes!

Look what I found growing in the drainage ditch!  This year's perfect Christmas tree!

The grass and yard is basically a swamp, though.  Walking across the yard, everything "squishes" because of these conditions:

Would you believe more rain is expected today and tomorrow?  The yard is already a swamp!

The bees are doing well, too.  The wildflowers are nice and 'juicy' this summer with plenty of nectar,  and the bees are surviving nicely.   Here is another one of their favorite foods:  wild mustard.

Butterflies like wild mustard, too.

One of our two bee yards.  One hive has 2 honey supers already!  We have 11 hives.

After the fierce storm and high winds we got this Saturday, I thought my petunias were a goner.........but they look beautiful!   How they managed to survive the 50-60 mph plus winds is beyond me!

How did these petunias survive the storm?  What a wonderful blessing!

And finally, here's a little dose of "cute" - one of our tom cats in cooling off by the porch.  He doesn't have a name.  Can you think of one?  I've been calling him "Whitey" for obvious reasons and also because I can't think of any good names. 

What would be a good name for this tom cat?

All in all we feel very blessed.  Some things are not doing well (potato bugs have eaten up our potatoes and I sprayed with some bee-friendly insecticide which did nothing, and we have a skunk eating our hens' eggs), but all things considered it "could be worse" to quote a typical Minnesota saying!  We have not flooded, we have not lost our home, and the Lord has blessed us with plenty.   We'll still have lots of crops, lots of honey, lots of fruit, and life goes on here at Honey B Farm.