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Several days ago I unexpectedly spotted a gang of honeybees clustered on a flower. I was so surprised that I don't even remember what flower they were visiting. My first hope was that the honeybees are making a comeback.

After a few seconds my brain kicked in and I remembered seeing a truck carrying white boxes toward the neighbor's farm. I also knew that he had planted a large acreage of watermelon this spring. Throw in that bees often travel a mile or two from the hive and my mystery was solved.

For those who haven't missed the honeybees, I offer a few tidbits of history. For years, beekeepers struggled with diseases. These were a significant factor in honey production, but were not serious enough to eliminate the wild honeybee populations that came mostly from hive escapees.

That was followed by a massive population build-up of a mite that is almost uncontrollable. The native wild populations are gone and a significant number of commercial hives were also destroyed.

There is much literature suggesting the importance of pollinating insects, of which the honeybee is, or was, the most important. Some claim the quality of a melon or the size of a fruit is directly proportional to the number of visits made by a pollinating insect.

To be honest, most, if not all, of the fruits and some of the vegetables we eat are the direct result of the plant's effort to reproduce. With a peach, for example, the plant is just supplying a fleshy cover to protect the seed over winter until germination of the seed can occur the following spring.

With the demise of the honeybee, nature has been forced to call up its second team. Most members of the bee family also can provide pollination services. Bumblebees are especially good because their fuzzy bodies will carry a lot of pollen from one plant to the next as they collect nectar.

The pollen is male and the nectar is extracted from the female parts of the flower. The exchange gives birth to a seed and thus lots of the things we like to eat.

Hummingbirds, bats, some flies, butterflies and wind are all important members of the second team of pollinators.

Beekeepers today have the opportunity to buy queen bees that are resistant to the mite. Over time the queen becomes the mother of all the bees in the hive. If the beekeeping industry gets back on its feet, there will be escapes and maybe wild bees will again become established.The problem is that the cost of each resistant queen is enough to fill the gas tank of most of our vehicles.

The second problem is that all plants are not equal. Some produce flowers with both male and female parts. Some produce both male and female flowers on the same plant. Others produce female flowers on one plant and male flowers on another. Still others will produce fruit only if two different, but related, plants are in proximity.

The end of that last paragraph presents some often-confusing problems in the ornamental landscape. Next week we will tackle that issue.

Pollination is important, more important than most of us realize. While we wait for the honeybee to hopefully make a comeback, watch your spraying. Don't destroy the second team.

About a year ago someone was rhapsodizing to me about an early spring blooming hardy vine with fragrant yellow flowers. I had no clue what plant they were talking about but quickly suggested that if they brought me some cuttings I would try to root them and divide the spoils.

At some point we identified the plant as winter jasmine. As far as the Latin is concerned, I found several offerings. Geisemium sempervirons seems to be the most accepted name.

I managed to root four plants. Two were returned and two stayed with me. The cuttings had a few flowers and I have been observing their growth. From maybe six inches in the spring they are now approaching three feet.

It is a candidate for sun or light shade. Planting away from the harshest winter winds also seems wise. They seem vigorous but not overpowering. The leaves are small enough that it has an airy appearance. Thanks to whoever introduced me to this plant.

On the other extreme is another full sun vine I have discovered. This one is for the patient gardener and needs enough space to go 15 to 20 feet. Now I'm talking about the hardy kiwi or Actinidia kolomikta.

It is grown for its white and pink and green foliage. Patience is required as the mature foliage shows more color than the juvenile foliage. This vine also gets a small green edible berry in late September if you have both a male and female plant. Unfortunately, I have never seen offerings identified by sex. I have not seen the fruit.

Another vigorous vine is chocolate vine or Akebia quinata. This one is vigorous, too, and is grown for its vanilla-scented dark maroon flowers. The foliage adds interest throughout the season.

The literature suggests that it is best when heavily pruned as a vine or is very effective on a difficult bank. Since I never get all my pruning done, now I am eying a nasty, steep bank for this one.Dutchman's pipe, Aristolochia littorallis is another vigorous but not overly aggressive vine with very large leaves. It has an interesting flower that is maroon marbled with white. I'll bet you can guess how it is shaped.

There, that brings my count of perennial vines described in the last two weeks to at least seven and I haven't even mentioned hydrangea vine which has been a wimp in my garden to date, the false hydrangea vines which I think are better, and clematis which I love but seem a bit more demanding culturally than anything discussed in this and the last column. >

A severe thunderstorm in the summer of 1956 undid one of my grandmother's most interesting plantings. Many years earlier she had planted a trumpet vine (Campsis radicans) at the base of an aging black walnut tree.

As a child, I marveled at this vine that reached the highest branches of the tree. In the midsummer, it was covered with orange trumpet shaped flowers. I spent many hours watching the swarms of hummingbirds that were frequent visitors.

My second encounter with a trumpet vine was one planted on the southeast corner of the old farmhouse where I lived for 47 years. I often joke that I moved because I tired of battling this rapid growing vine.

Currently, I have a trumpet vine growing on a post well away from any other plants of interest. It's quite behaved. I have no knowledge that plant breeding or selection has found a tamer version of this one. Many times I have been tempted to stick one by a giant tree with sparse leaves and attempt to duplicate grandmother's planting.

Another strong growing, but less aggressive, vine is one of the selections of the native honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervirens). This one has much smaller trumpet shaped flowers, but they too are magnets for hummingbirds.

Our native honeysuckle should not be confused with the powerful smelling yellow one imported from Asia for erosion control that has become a rather nasty invasive. Our native may extend 10 to 15 feet and fits a medium sized trellis well.

Either of the above vines will take some shade, but prefer full sun. Like the trumpet vine, honeysuckles now come with flowers in varying shades of orange, red and yellow. One problem with the honeysuckle is that in the early spring it may attract enough aphids to attract attention.

Another fast growing vine from grandmother's era is the wisteria. Interestingly, both my mother and my grandmother had trained this vine into a standard or a single stemmed bush. Both bloomed profusely for them.

Left as a vine, I hear reports, and my own experience has been a fast growing plant that is often difficult to bring to maturity and bloom. My guess is that the frequent pruning required maintaining this plant, as a bush was one of the keys to heavy flowering.

Again, the above information covers the wisteria from eastern Asia. There is a native wisteria (Wisteria frutesens). Recently a dwarf version has been selected in a garden in South Carolina. It is now available under the name Amethyst Falls.

Remember that when the word dwarf is used with a plant it simply means smaller. This new wisteria should top out under 15 feet and be a much more reliable bloomer. My early evidence suggests this to be true.Before this gets too long I plan to continue my discussion of perennial vines next week.

I plainly remember that storm. July 26, 1956 sticks in my mind but I cannot be positive. The real memory was that my great uncle from California was visiting then. Although I only saw the man possibly three or four times in my life, he took the time to correspond regularly with a preadolescent. I'll always have a special place in my heart for that memory.

The best way to have a weed free garden is to not let weeds grow in it. Before you spend too much time looking for hidden wisdom in the last statement, let me digress and explain.

More than twenty years ago when I still had the orchard, my wife and I attended a weeklong international fruit conference in the state of Washington. Part of the program included tours of orchards.There was one that I will never forget. It was perfect. Everyone there recognized it. When quizzed, the owner stated that he carried all his maintenance tools on his tractor and when he saw a problem he'd stop and fix it.

Shortly after we lose our ability to see a weed and not pull it, our weed problems will nearly end.

Weed control starts before you plant. Planting before thinking about weed control is a sure recipe for failure.

Your pre-plant weed control choices are cultivation, smothering or chemicals. If you go the chemical route with a product like Roundup you should make several applications a month or so apart. There are weeds that grow over winter and others that sprout throughout the growing season. Get them all.

Smothering can be accomplished with black plastic or fabric left in place for about two months during the hottest part of the growing season. On a nearly level site a shortcut is cultivation, followed by planting through a several page layer of newspaper and topped with a layer of mulch to hide the newspapers. I haven't figured out how to keep the mulch on the paper where there is much of a slope.Cultivation is the age-old method of weed control. Unfortunately, weeds follow a hoe. Every time you dig you bring new weed seeds to the surface and the battle continues.The hoe is valuable if you use it to tackle newly germinated weeds by just scratching the surface. I heard a weed scientist state that cultivation in the evening brings fewer weeds than cultivation earlier in the day. It's something about the seeds needing light to wake up before they can germinate.

When you plant there are two more factors to consider in the battle against weeds. A light layer of mulch will slow weed germination. Too much mulch can impede the plants you wish to grow. I have seen few problems staying in the range of an inch or two.

The second idea suggests a cottage garden. Close planting eliminates space for the weeds and provides shade to reduce light and inhibit germination.

I will claim that after maybe three or four years I have several large shrub and perennial beds where I spend less time annually than I do on the same sized area of grass.

In conclusion, Roundup is my friend, I'm nervous about most other garden herbicides, I seldom take the hoe to the garden when I'm chasing weeds and I usually have the stains on my hands to prove it.

If you are one of those persons captivated by the fall and early winter beauty of ornamental grasses, I believe that now the stars and planets are better aligned for successful planting than they have been in recent memory. I'll continue by explaining which parts of that last sentence you should take seriously.

Most grasses thrive in hot weather. Our natural tendency is to want to plant them in the fall when we see their beauty or think of them in the midst of our spring planting.

Any fully mature, blooming plant is slower to establish in the garden than a smaller, younger juvenile or fast growing one. Add in the fact that most grasses like it hot, it is no surprise that fall planted grasses will linger until next summer before becoming well established and happy.

The same is often true in the spring. Plopping a grass into our cool spring soil is almost a guarantee that it will sit there and mope until warmer weather arrives. This past spring was a classic example of a poor grass planting spring.

Besides, it would be my guess that if you find a vigorously growing grass in the garden center in the early spring it was grown in greenhouse conditions or imported from a warmer climate. Neither would be a recipe for instant success.

There is a wide array of ornamental grasses out there.

Miscanthus is probably the most admired and most maligned grass. That's the one with the large white or pinkish-white plumes in the fall. They come in a multitude of heights, leaf color variations and leaf widths. The shortest one I know is about two feet and the tallest is well over my head.

The rap on miscanthus is that it is invasive and, thus, a threat to our native environment. I have grown them for years and have never seen seedlings except for one thin leafed variety. Even with that one I get only several a year. Others may have different results but I will continue to be vigilant and still enjoy them.

The second group is often called frost grass. These are the panicums. They have a large, very open, panicle or flower and are at their best when planted so that the morning sun can reflect off the dew or frost of fall or early winter In fact, all grasses are best used when back-lighted by the morning or evening sun.

Third, I must mention the group that offers a foxtail flower. These are the pennisetums. They are generally shorter and offer a bloom earlier in the season.

My favorite for all season enjoyment is the native little bluestem. It is mid-sized with good blue foliage all summer, turning tan when cold weather arrives. Its flower head is a bit more restrained and resembles a bird's foot. To me it is just the right size, right vigor and a good color for my gardens.

I could ramble on about grass varieties but I will end my case now with the soil is hot and the summer moisture is unusually plentiful. Grab a shovel and make an ornamental grass happy.