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honeygirlgrows.bsky.social
Garden Designer | Michelin Chef Gardens🌿 Climate 1st Biodiverse Pollinator Habitats 🪲 Bug Nerd 🦋Conservationist 🌾Author, 1st Regenerative Beekeeping Practices 🐝 Master Gardener/Beekeeper Robin 👋 She/Her💍 📍LA on Tongva Land Typos are my now
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FACTS to share (tag a beekeeper or bee l💛ver): African bees are naturally more docile than the gentlest you’ve worked with. (Info straight to my mentor of 16?(!!) years this spring, Randy Oliver). Puerto Rico’s “Africanized” or African-mated bees are incredibly docile… 🌱 🧵

Just-born #MonarchButterfly 🐛 today in my driveway garden, which is FULL of flowering milkweed! Monarchs used to hit early spring & many years, lay year round, or have a 1-mo diapause in January/late February, now we don’t see them until late May in full force (& man are we loaded in eggs!) 🌱

Exhausting weekend re-queening hives, and thanks to Kaiser’s inept allergy department I’m allergic to venom again. So itchy and swollen. Returning to my previous allergist (I was venom tolerant & the shots also made the beginnings of arthritis in my fingers completely vanish for over a decade.) 🌱

Gardener / beekeeper? What weird stuff is the love of your life tolerating? Me: Dead plants (seeds drying), cuttings of plants in jars, an occasional queen bee inside kitchen cabinets, tinctures, 5-gallon honey buckets, 1,000s good bug larvae/eggs (in fridge) we install to avoid spraying anything… 🌱

Yesterday I woke up to @jstpwalsh.bsky.social laughing m in the kitchen… no doubt the scent of roses hit him when he opened the fridge half filled w/rose geraniums (which smell more rosey than roses🌹). I’m pressing the flowers and using the green buds to infuse bath salts. 🌱 Life with a gardener.

If you think the job I made up is cool, my partner @jstpwalsh.bsky.social is a Space Archaeologist. This article (& the work of most who have won the Explorer's Club Award), are an inspiration to share with kids & young adults to push & break limits of what fields of work appear to limit us to. 🌱 💫

Since we’re talking irrigation (not sexy stuff, but lifesaving), here’s my all time favorite timer. It’s WiFi, so in climate warming heatwaves, you can change it from afar, run extra cycles from anywhere. Auto irrigation is the game-changer that allows you to be a lazy gardener, success despite. 🌱

Here is a really really simple thing you should do in your garden: Label and number irrigation valves with # correlating to the timer, and areas each waters. (Why have I never done this physically? I only kept under client phonebook). If you have a leak or fail, it will save you time/headache! 🌱

Hope grows in gardens. 🐛 This one the driveway of the apartment building next to me - the landlord lets me grow because it used to be filled with weeds. Now filled with pollinators dahlias, milkweeds, a literal monarch highway. Tall sunflowers reach each apartment window. All neighbors love it. 🌱

Today almost broke my 6th year record of 0 swarms (overworked -I hadn’t installed my no-swarm door). #RegenerativeBeekeeping So for Eduardo’s 6th only lesson, we put them back. 💪Today he said, “let me, let me.” He made a masterful clean shake - just like we practiced with frames. #Beekeeping 🌱

Hundreds of millions of birds are reported to be migrating north this week and on across the US, Bright artificial lights and skyglow disrupting the night sky causes fatal collisions. Pledge to turn outdoor lights off during migration months. 🌱

⚠️Share: Don’t eat the shellfish. 🍤🦐🦪 🦀 don’t swim in S. Cal oceans, 🚫 let kids play on sand - city of Santa Monica keeps combing in fire contaminants: asbestos, arsenic, lead and cadmium (feeding the historic algae bloom killing marine life from Mexico to N. Cal)… beaches are open to the public. 🌱