I have become an apiarist (a beekeeper).  The bee on the left is a bee from one of the two colonies I purchased. 

Fascinating and industrious, the bees are enjoying the many flowers around here.  Many were checking out our gladiolus patch.  

Some more photos of our many gladiolus are available here.

Our gladiolus are have started to bloom at the farm.  We have thousands of them! Many are baby plants, but quite a few grown specimens are producing a lot of flowers in a wide variety of colours.

The bulbs were left behind by the previous owners of the farm we recently purchased.  The plants came up in what we were going to make our vegetable garden, but we decided to keep the gladiolus to see what they would do.  Very glad we did as many are very interesting varieties.  Now we need to decide where we will expand them to so the baby gladiolus plants have room to grow.

To see all the Gladiolus pictures click here