Today was bee day. My husband and I got up just after three in the morning, to get to Hackensack by the allotted time to pick up package bees. The time buffer we allowed for was, thankfully, not needed.
The apple of Paul Bunyan’s eye, Lucette. 
Butterfly garden at the Hackensack Lending Library
Mann Lake was a hoppin’ place today, but they were kind enough to let us pick up the bees early, after we did a bit of in-store shopping. We got home an hour sooner than expected. Which is good, because it gave my daughter and I enough time to install the bees today. The saskatraz packages seemed quite gentle. Time will tell.
Our raspberry patch used to be behind where the hives are. I moved the whole patch of them to the side yard last week (Ouch!), and they are perfectly happy.
Each day leading up to this has been a rush of playing catch-up, since we started recovering from Covid. A lot of my seed starts will have to be restarted, even at this late date. But a lot of other things have been falling into place. Structures and some tidying up have been getting finished. Some plants have started blooming, which keeps discouragement away.
Fringed tulips in front of the transplanted raspberries. 
I look forward to these blooms every spring. 
Crabapple 
The high tunnel is full of green.
The live butterfly garden plants were delivered yesterday, so tomorrow I’ll start getting parts of the front yard ready for them.
There hasn’t been much time to finish my current read, by my favorite author, and I’m so exhausted that it’s probably not going to be a tonight thing either. Maybe later this week, when the sun peeks out again and the bees will hopefully be alive, present and busy.
