I am told the above picture is a less frequent variety of bee balm that is wild here in Texas. Most bee balm here is lemon or spotted (also called horsemint) but I saw this bee balm while riding in the buggy and thought it was really interesting…especially since it was growing wild. So far this year we have had quite a bit of rain and all varieties of bee balm are blooming in mass. Since cows do not prefer bee balm it will grow in most pastures. Make sure to give those neighbors some free honey because your bees do not understand fence lines!
This is a vitex tree we planted in front of our chicken coop a couple years ago and it is going crazy with all the rain we had this spring. Sorry, the picture is a bit out of focus…blame the cameraman not the camera! These are also called chaste trees and bloom from spring through our first cold weather….that is below 50 for all you northerners. These trees do very well in Texas with some built in draught tolerance.
Sage and Vitex
Not a great picture because the sage (on the left) is not blooming yet and the vitex negundo (on the right) is not very brilliant. I can say that my honey bees were working this vitex even more than the chaste vitex even though it is not as brilliant. About 3 weeks after this picture the humidity climbed into the 90% and the sage bloomed...sorry, no picture.
