At last, Summer is here!

[mumsisdaughter]

After some lovely sunny mornings followed by monsoon-type rain and thunderstorms during the last fortnight, we now have a period of settled sunny weather forecast, hurray!

A couple of photos of the back garden for those who asked for an update back in April, I think :)

Here are the purple/blue geranium/cranesbill/mallow and pale pink whatevers at the back of the pond. If you squint at the photo of some of the goldfish, you can see a few of the dark fry; one between the goldfish and the upper edge of the picture and three or four in amongst the weed towards the right. (The floating square contains barley extract to quell the blanketweed.)

The bees LOVE the purple/blue flowers. We've all 8 of the common UK bumblebee species visiting them all day long except for the rainy hours AND regular visits by real honeybees. No idea where they all come from!

Going outside now to read in the sunshine :D

Comments

[gairid]

Oooh! The blue cranesbill is gorgeous...and I sppy with my little eye some pink cranesbill ('Wargrave's' perhaps? Or maybe 'Ballerina'?) mingled in there as well. Is that yellow iris? and some butterups. Queen Anne's Lace or is it goatsbeard? And what's the vine on the right with the yellow flowers? The rain appears to have made everything pretty happy.

Your polliwogs are getting big -- I am suprosed those goldfish didn't devour them all when they were smaller. Thanks for posting these; I love to see everyone's gardens!

I'll have to get a garden post up soon--am still laboring over my noir drabbles, so I'll get those done first.

[mumsisdaughter]

Now, now, don't get all complicated on me with your plant nursery smarts :D Mostly what you can see just grew where it wanted, except for the odd one or two, so I have no idea of their variety names. Also much of it could be classed as weeds by some folk but I think what-the-hell it's pretty so leave it alone AND (and it's a huuuuuuge AND) the bees care not a jot for the blousy kind of flower that's been bred purely for good looks. They love the scent and taste of the simpler, wilder type.

Anyway, to clarify what you can see, clockwise from the top:
Behind the bench: stinging nettles (good for caterpillars/butterflies), bramble (too entrenched to shift but I just contain it in that patch), could be cow parsley/Queen Anne's lace (probably ground elder, lol), and a shrubby conifer of some description.
Left of the bench, against the fence: hebe (pink, ready to flower, in a tub)
Edge of pond: (left to right)
hebe (white, ready to flower: that one was planted!), pale pink aquilegia (one of many in the garden; the most basic form of flower), purple cranesbill (just grows and spreads like weeds, probably the wild form here since this land was a farm before the houses were built), lamb's ears (Stachys byzantina with delicate pink flowers still in its original pot but now firmly rooted through it into the garden and spreading like a bush), yellow flag (wild, also in the pond where it grows taller and flowers earlier), red campion (front and back of picture: wild from when this was a field, it just lasts and lasts and the smaller bees love it), pale pink cranesbill (again not planted but wild, probably a garden-escape), plenty of buttercup (I know it's a weed but it's a good contrast to the mainly blue/purple/pink look of our garden).
Extreme right: oh, I had to laugh at your excitement at the yellow-flowering vine, sorry. It just shows how cameras lie! The yellow is buttercup, climbing up amongst the leaves of wild bindweed! I try to keep the bindweed in check but I do like it to climb up the wild briar rose because it makes such gorgeous white trumpets. The briar is what remains of an old rose that got fed up of being transplanted by the husband: he hates roses. He succeeded in killing the rose variety but not the stock! Now I won't let him touch it and it's arching beautifully with the palest pink five-petalled flowers and it makes masses of bright red hips in the autumn. I went to the trouble of de-seeding and de-whiskering hundreds of them last year to make syrup and jam. Never again! The produce is lovely but my hands did not like the tiny whiskers...so irritating.

The two colours you will not see anywhere in our garden are red and orange: I do not like that hits-you-in-the-eye brashness of the cultivated red and orange flowers. Subtle tones for me :)

This is rambling on! I'll post some more angles of the garden, later :D