It’s thundering outside with a steady downpour accompanying the booms. This means I am not out in the garden with the black flies. Instead, I am brewing up the week’s Red Shiso.

As I make the Red Shiso, the view’s not bad. The Lilacs encircling the office are just beginning their May fireworks and they grow so close to the office they almost fall into the room when I open the windows.

Here’s a gorgeous Lilac called Pocahontas.

This pink one is called Marie Frances.

Here’s the Lilac that started it all, the one called “common”. Behind it you can see the two new bee hives.

I sat down with the bee to see if we could name each hive. The one on the left is Ben-Wa. The one on the right is Menemsha. The older hives tucked out of sight to the right of these two hives are Andromeda and Lyra. I would like to paint the hives some color other than white, maybe blue because I have read that bees like blue hives. I would also like to paint their names on each hive. This project is obviously not a top priority in the busy month of May, but it will be fun to do when I get to it.

Here’s a photo of the Plum tree we pulled back into place after it fell down in the 60 mile an hour winds that blew through several weeks ago.

In the foreground on the left is a Montmorency Sour Cherry tree encircled in a cloud of happy bees. In the middle, with the rope and stake that’s keeping the tree upright, is the blooming Plum tree with a smaller Plum in front of it. There is nothing like that yellow green of early spring, is there?

Anyways, so far, so good with the rescue of this fallen Plum. It too has been a mass of blossoms and bees. So far, so good with the new honeybees settling into their new quarters. The bees have a seven acre meadow of Dandelions right out from their hives as well as all the blooming fruit trees. So far, so good with William and Jim navigating their new school days of vigilance.

So far, so good. I happily settle for that.