Today is Monarda fistulosa & Hypericum perforatum! Woohoo!
This morning I dragged my sleepy butt outside to water the north side of a patch of plants I keep. The ground is really hard and there are some weeds I need to pull in that section. Actually the plants are mostly old enough to be okay even in a weeklong stretch of hell ... I mean very hot weather. Which is good, because we have to pay for water use now.

Anyway I watered, and that woke me up because I always get wet. Someday I will figure out that sprinkler ... shni! (which means "not!")

I went out to the monarda, which had started blooming at the beginning of the heat wave, and are now half gone. Let me clarify: there is a HUGE patch of monarda fistulosa (wild bee balm) (the Omaha call it horsemint) where I watered. It was waterlogged. There's a patch of it by our metal rake wheels, which is the original patch, and there's a patch in the driveway that got established when we parked a small plow out there and left it several months.

So I raided the monarda by the wheels and the in the driveway. The bees were a little concerned, so I circled around them while I harvested. I got some nice pics of them, both bumble and honey, and some various unknown flies and other bees, including sweat bees. I only took pics of bumble and honeybees, and I'll have to crop in close for you to see them later.

I'm very very VERY happy to see the bees. They spray for mosquitoes in this town and I go for weeks without seeing them. *tiny mouth*

And where I was watering there's a patch of St. John's Wort as near to the driveway as it can get, blooming up a storm. So I also took some of it.

Topically, it's also good for wounds, so I'll wilt it up and throw it in the herb oil to stew. ... Kindof like refrigerator stew, yaknow? If it's out there and it will be good in the salve, in it goes!

... By the way, this is a wicker paper plate supporter for picnics. They make good herb dryers for small amounts of herb. ...