Bees, Dogs, Plants, and Pictures

[dawn_felagund]

Welp, it's been a busy past few weekends, hence my relative silence here. Bobby and I have been spending most of our time outside, getting ready for planting season. Everything was crunched into April and the first few weeks of May (versus beginning in March) since we were under a blanket of snow for just about all of March. And last year, what

Comments

[tarion_anarore]

Oh my gosh, Phil is too cute!

[dawn_felagund]

He is really into having that ball thrown for him. But I love the second picture, when it's falling, and the expression on his face is like, "Well ... here goes nothing!"

[heartofoshun]

The lantana is absolutely gorgeous. No wonder it is a favorite of yours. I have never seen anything like that Halloween tree of yours. Love are beautiful blossoms.

All the pictures are great. All of those dogs in the kitchen are wild! Quite hilarious also. Wow!

I have to take a quick shot at finding that Halloween tree. If you haven't found it unlikely that I will.

[dawn_felagund]

The lantana is absolutely gorgeous.

And it comes in many, many different colors, which makes it even better! :D I have the one I photoed this year, as well as one that is red-yellow gradient and one that is yellow-white gradient. It's perennial even as near as central Virginia, and I once found a variety that claimed to be hardy in our zone but didn't overwinter. (To be fair, our elevation means that we are on the low end for our zone, and I had it on the north side of the house.) It tends to be expensive for an annual but I can never resist putting in multiple plants each year.

I have to take a quick shot at finding that Halloween tree.Several people have suggested hawthorn, but it doesn't produce fruit. In fact, by the end of the summer, all of the leaves have generally fallen off, and it has really scraggly branches and bark, so it looks dead! Hence the name "Halloween tree." Bobby decorates it each year for Halloween fake cobwebs, bats, and coffin propped against the trunk. I see these trees sometimes used in commercial

[heartofoshun]

I tried to identify through the blossoms and no luck. I did not have a good enough image of the leaf to use any of those tree-finding apps.

There is a tree in front of our house that is nothing like it in looks, but is also the last tree to get leaves and the first one to lose them by weeks actually. I assumed it has been planted at the absolute edge of its possible survival zones, belongs much farther south. That may be the case with your Halloween tree also.

[dawn_felagund]

That's a possibility and one I hadn't thought of. I definitely don't think it's a native tree, and we are right on the line--but the wrong side of that line!--for plants that grow great even just a bit south of us. (Like perennial lantana! :D And the huge gorgeous crepemyrtles that are everywhere you look in central Virginia.)

When I go south, I get plant envy ...

[sinneahtes]

I'm trying to match the leaves, but could the Halloween tree be a hawthorn? (I searched "types of rosaceae trees" in Google images and clicked on a picture of flowers from TreeBrowser.org.)

[dawn_felagund]

Thank you for the link to TreeBrowser; I'm going to try that! I looked up the hawthorn, and one variety has flowers almost exactly like the Halloween tree ... but the Halloween tree doesn't produce fruit. The flowers just fall off eventually, and the leaves fall off at the end of the summer, and the tree looks dead for most of the year. Hence the name "Halloween tree." :)

[sinneahtes]

Ah well. I was all excited because when I told my mom I'd been looking for the identity of a "Halloween tree," she immediately thought of hawthorns without seeing any pictures or hearing any further descriptions. :) If it's not just that the individual tree doesn't produce noticeable fruit or something, those flowers still really make me think of the rosaceae family.

[dawn_felagund]

I'm going to pay extra close attention to it to make sure I am not missing or misremembering the fruit! Because that one hawthorn picture has flowers that look exactly like it. But all the pages on hawthorn I read mentioned long-lasting and noticeable fruit ... I hope I don't end up embarrassing myself on this one! :^P

[drummerwench]

Oh, gosh, sorry to hear about the bees. :( As I've mentioned, I love bees. Hope it works out for you and them.

[dawn_felagund]

Thank you! I hope so too. :) We were lucky (through a roundabout investigation into oloriel's advice below) to find a local farm selling queens over-the-counter, and our school director--who is fascinated by our bees--was glad to let Bobby go pick one up during the schoolday and let us leave when the students left to install her. She's in now, so we'll see how it goes. The beekeeper who sold her to us suggested that it might have been the couple of days of hot weather we had last week that did her and her attendants in. :(

[oloriel]

The beekeeper who sold her to us suggested that it might have been the couple of days of hot weather we had last week that did her and her attendants in.

That makes sense. I've been taught that bees need water (ideally, actual water, but humid air will also do) in order to handle candy, so if you had a hot and dry week, it's possible they starved in spite of having food right in front of their noses. :/

[oloriel]

The tree looks like a red-blossomed type of hawthorn to me, though of course there isn't much detail to go by. But the leaf and blossom shape seems to fit!

I've been lucky hibernating lantanas a few times now by simply taking them inside in fall, cutting them back, keeping them watered and waiting for warmer days. Sometimes they loose all leaves but bud again in spring, and sometimes they just keep going through winter - the main thing appears to be not letting them catch temperatures below 10°C or so. Of course, that requires getting them in pots in time - and remembering to water them...

So sorry about your bees! I hope with the new queen, you'll finally be lucky. Or maybe you can find someone who has a frame of (young) brood to spare that you can put in your colony so they can make their own queen?

[dawn_felagund]

The tree looks like a red-blossomed type of hawthorn to me

I investigated the hawthorn and the flowers are almost identical! I had a moment of triumph! ... but our tree doesn't produce fruit. Back to the drawing board ... ;)

But thank you for this suggestion. :D

I've been lucky hibernating lantanas a few times now by simply taking them inside in fall, cutting them back, keeping them watered and waiting for warmer days.

I'm going to have to try that. The only lantanas I've had so far have been huge, sprawling for a couple of meters on either side, but two of this year's claim to stay smallish, so if they do, then I'll definitely give overwintering a go. I already overwinter several ornamentals in my study, so why not a couple more? :D

Or maybe you can find someone who has a frame of (young) brood to spareI want to thank you so much for this suggestion because it started Bobby on a research process that helped us to find a local (northern-bred!) queen! :D I emailed him with your suggestion this morning, so he went onto the Carroll

[oloriel]

The kind of hawthorn that's called Rotdorn around here actually bears very little to no fruit, so that might still be it. And of course many wild trees don't bear fruit until they're ten or even fifteen years old, though I have no clue whether hawthorn is among those - and how old your tree is. I still expect it's some form of hawthorn hybrid!

So glad I could help with the bees! Being scared about a colony's survival is such a dreadful thing, especially if you don't have many colonies. (My beekeeping teacher used to be a lot more relaxed, but of course if you've got 100 boxes, two dying is just statistics. For me, it would be devastating!) So I'm glad my suggestion helped you to find a solution. ^^