Some Color still in the Garden

I have a mason bee "house" in my garden. Actually, it's just a wooden box that holds the cardboard straws that the bees use to lay their eggs in. I have a neighbor who's an expert on mason bees in particular. They're native to the western US and extremely effective pollinators - much more so than other bees. They're also known as Orchard bees. At any rate, my neighbor has converted some of us into mini-bee-keepers and today she held a little workshop to help us understand how to clean the cocoons and store them for the winter. It was fascinating and I learned so much about these amazing bees!

I stumbled across some hellebores that are just beginning to emerge in the garden, as well as some miniature daffodils. But they're not really big enough to get a good photo of. So I'm still finding bits of color in the garden - today's blip is of a Nandina looking quite firey. It's not actually a very big plant at the moment, but I'm planning on moving it to a more suitable place and it should flourish next year.