Cascade of Flowers

My Viburnum (Korean spice) seems to be flowering for a second time this year. Only in places but quite surprising.

And JJ‘s roses are cascading down the fence hindered only by pernicious snake vine that I spend a lot of time snipping and cutting and throwing away. It doesn’t seem to do more than annoy it.

The buttercups have spread into the lawn but I can’t bring myself to mow, just yet. There’s time to do that after they fade, and after the bees have had time to collect pollen. I have seen a lot of hover bees (and hoverflies) and red-tailed bumblebees, but not so many honeybees. Hoping it’s just a preference to other flowers, and not a shortage of the bees themselves. A farm where I metal detect has hundreds of them visiting the clover flowers in his fields. I don’t think he keeps bees but there could be many nearby. Fingers crossed!

I spotted a plant growing against the fence trying to be inconspicuous. I believe it to be a common Teasel, and when it flowers I’ll be more than certain. They produce a very distinctive spiky flower. A welcome bit of color later in the summer.

The recent rain finished off pyracantha flowers, we’ll revisit them in the fall when those red red berries will be everywhere. Fortunately my boxwood border plants are just as covered in flowers similar to the pyracantha’s, except with a pale hint of colour.

I’ve been mucking out my hydroponic tank and putting some newly gifted tomatoes, and a couple of germinated avocados. I had some carnivorous plant seeds in there but I have to give up on them germinating after all these months. They were just an experiment really. Similar to this stalk of celery I grew in the corner. I started it back in January I think. It’s easily 3 feet tall now. Its gone all tough and bitter now and but I’ve included a photo since I’m impressed that all that grew from a 1 inch piece that had no roots on it. I did eat some of the leaves earlier in the year; they taste like cilantro. I think I put them on a burrito or into salsa with other salad fixings.

Not all is happy in our garden, our Japanese Camellia seems stressed and almost all of its buds have turned brown before ever flowering. I understand that they are considered hard to care for but I’m not sure what’s giving it grief. It was planted in this location by a former gardener of ours, and it seems to tick all the boxes for camellia care. My guess is that even though it’s in a damp corner of the garden with partial shade it just didn’t get enough water in the long dry spell just past. Hopefully the rains that are predicted for this week will revive it even if we’ve missed its prime flowering window. I think I will spare you the photos but I promise to return to it once I’ve researched what can be done for it. Instead, here’s a pic of our hedges in full bloom. If you use your imagination, you can picture hundreds of tiny red tailed bumblebees flitting from flower to flower…

cheers!