A bee on the bog salvia

Over the recent Columbus Day weekend,  we had temperatures in the mid – 80s. Weird. I remember when I was growing up in Quebec, Canada, it was not unheard of to have snow on that weekend, which is Thanksgiving there, in case you didn’t know.

We went to the beach and there were people swimming and tanning. It could have been July. There’s been a bit of frost in northern RI, but here on the coast – nothing yet. The annuals are still doing their thing, and I’m still getting eggplants.

It's summery on the salt marsh.

When I did a walk-through of the garden this morning. I watched a bee pollinating my Salvia Uliginosa, or Bog Salvia. This is a lovely cultivar, by the way. The flowers are an intense gentian blue. It is hardy only to Zone 8, so it is treated as an annual here. It is deer resistant, drought resistant and generally trouble-free. I am particularly taken with the color – a more turquoise blue than it appears in the photo.

Anyway, back to the bee: she seemed to be in a big hurry, rushing from flower to flower, desperately searching for some late season pollen. Most of it’s probably gone.