Squash flowers and squash bees

I "surprised" a number of bees this morning in flowers of my vining Tromboncino squash, a Cucurbita moschata cultivar. I vaguely recalled that squash had specialist bees, and had fun finding out more about them. Early in the morning is when squash bees visit flowers (these actually looked like they spent the night). Squash bees are native bees that specialize in flowers of Cucurbita plants -- zucchini, winter squash, pumpkins, etc. They forage early in the morning, collecting nectar and pollen from both the male and female flowers.

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Squash flowers and woodchucks

Aside from hoping for rain, it's a quiet time in the garden, except for gathering tomatoes and weeding. There'd been no sign of woodchucks in the satellite garden for awhile, so I hopefully transplanted a few of the trombocino squash seedlings that were growing in the main garden last weekend. It was an overcast day, so they looked good, and I had visions of the vines rambling over the mulch producing squash until fall, like last year. Ha! They were fine the next morning, but by late afternoon, THIS is what they looked like.

I checked out the developing squash on the large vine in the main garden, and felt better.

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