Ceanothus

One of our most visible plants at St. Anne's is our lovely ceanothus. In late winter/early spring our ceanothus blooms, summoning dozens of bumble and honey bees to its flowers with their unusual smell. Wikipedia describes the smells of some varieties as "intensely fragrant almost to the point of being nauseasting, and are said to resemble the odor of 'boiling honey in an enclosed area'".

I think some students might agree that our ceanothus smell resembles this description. One student called the smell "soap", another "old socks", and I myself find it a bit like "stinky locker room". However, it seems to be intoxicating for the bees in the best way, as the noise of their humming is startling, and we can stand and count up to 15 bees at any given time in the height of its bloom.



Ceanothus is a California native, and interestingly, one of the few plants whose seeds can lie dormant for 100's of years. In the wild, forest fires are required to germinate the seeds, but in captivity, seeds can be forced to germinate through long periods of wet and cold.  A easier propogation method is to cut and root the plant stems.

See the two bees in this photo?

The Bee Game

In 2006, one of our founding garden parents, Deidre, made a fantastic game called The Bee Game. Her idea was to introduce the children to pollination through play. Every spring since, the kindergarten gardeners have played The Bee Game, and for years after children into the grades beg to play it all over again.

First of all, the children must reach into a little sack and pull out a card with a small swatch of fabric. This card indicates their role: flower or bee.

This photo shows a blue flower and orange flower. The children pin the felt onto their front, and carry their golden ball of pollen around with them.

The bees are striped like honey or bumble bees.

To set the scene, I explain that it is a very windy day, and the flowers are blowing madly in the wind. The bee must buzz around and land on a flower (tag them), and when this happens, the flower stops running and the bee and flower trade golden balls of pollen.



It is a good thing to be tagged, I explain, for otherwise your flower will not grow seeds. The children learn through this game that the flowers must receive a different pollen ball from their own in order to grow the seeds. Once tagged, or pollinated, the children stay still and "grow their seeds".

When the bees catch all the flowers the game ends, and then we trade costumes and play it all over again!

Gorgeous New Comb

Here are two photos showing honey bee comb before it's used by the bees for either storage or birthing. Notice the traditional tear drop of the comb. This comes from a top bar hive. Bees attach one comb to each top bar in the hive.

Here's a close up of the hexagonal cells.

Time to Maturity

When one reads seed packs, the information includes the time to maturity. This means how long it will take the plant to grow from planting to its ripe fruit. For example, the days between planting a corn seed to when the plant produces a juicy ear of edible corn.

There are early and late season varieties, and for San Francisco I recommend the early season (or short season) plants. We do not have warm enough weather conditions to support slow growing summer vegetables. And, if you don't have full sun, that adds days to maturity as well. Soil quality, of course, goes into maturity calculations as well.



Here are two crops, celery and dwarf kale, that we planted in the summer of 2012. They are just now reaching maturity. Yes, they over wintered and that means cool climates, and we also planted them in nearly full shade. They grew fine, but it took eight months instead of the advertised five. It's good to experiment, however, to know what plants will tolerate shade so you can take advantage of all the space in your garden.