Orange Mullein

At the college gardens, I found a lovely plant called orange mullein.

The bees loved it.

It had so many more blossoms on each stalk than regular mullein.

I am linking this post with Today's Flowers.

Cranesbill

Cranesbill images from last summer

I love the way the blossoms change with age.

I managed to capture a bee, too.

I am linking this post with NF Blo-Ma.

Borage

Since the snow came in the middle of the week, the temperatures have plummeted, so I am hanging out in October...

I sure hope no one minds...

I am linking this post with Today's Flowers.

Busy Little Bees

We have not  yethad a killing frost, so the bees are still busy with the asters and any other flowers they can still find.

I am linking this with Nature Footsteps Winged.

 

Bees in the Chicory

This morning, I was watching a bee in the chicory blossoms,

and marveling at her coating of pollen!

To see more flowers from around the world, click the icon for Today's Flowers, on the right.

 

Jerusalem Artichokes

The Jerusalem artichokes are finally blooming.

They are another member of the sunflower family,

 but the preferred part for eating is the tuber, rather than the seeds.

 I don't care for them which explains why they are taking over my back yard. 

 They are a good cut flower, though, and I like the colour, even if they are known in the family as B's favourite yellow flowers.

Sarcastically.

Artichokes

Algonquin College was growing a bed of artichokes last summer. I have only found out what they were, this past week. Before, I had them labelled as spiky things.

The flowers are beautiful and exotic, and the bees love them! Some flowers had four or five bees working in them.

I have been told about a pig farmer acquiring a lot of artichokes, and realizing after a couple of days, that the pig by-products were not nearly as fragrant as usual.

By experimenting, he found that feeding artichokes as 10% of the total diet, kept them that way.