I’ve settled a few herbaceous cuttings in our rental house garden – geraniums, helianthus, Michaelmas daisies, centaurea, valerian, and oregano, and they’re all doing rather well.
But this opium poppy brought herself, and this morning proved a hot spot for a bee and hoverfly feeding frenzy. Visitors included a white tailed bumble bee and a flurry of marmalade hoverflies.
No, it’s not a joke question, but there’s clearly a lot of satisfaction going on in these photos. So many hoverflies, and different kinds too. Also photographer satisfaction – in that I managed to capture them so I could show you. Then there’s gardener satisfaction too – always something new to discover out in the garden, with or without camera. The only problem is I’m sure Ark is going to ask if I know what species they are. Nope, I don’t, but here’s the place to find out, which further adds to my satisfaction, because I can now provide this very fascinating link – at least as far as hoverfly lovers are concerned.
Paula has truly set us a challenge this week: DECONSTRUCTION. So as my stab at this school of philosophical thought, here is an abstracted opium poppy, its stamens and petals being blown off in the wind: caught in the act of deconstruction then: from flower to seed capsule. The cycle of life in all its parts.
The opium poppies that have been growing behind our sheds (aka the old privies) are on their last gasp now – one or two blooms amongst a phalanx of seed heads. But there’s still plenty of bee forage along the fence – pale mauve spires of spearmint, purple tufts of wild knapweed, the oregano coming into flower.
And there’s also much to entice them inside the garden.
These ornamental strawberry plants have colonized the gravel path. I might have to move them at the end of the summer. They definitely have world domination in mind. And although they make tasty Alpine type strawberry fruits, the blackbirds always seem to get to them first.
Purple Toadflax is another bee favourite, and it also grows itself around the garden.
And finally, here we have a bee in clover, wings all of a dazzle in the midday sun:
Now for some really good close-up photography, please buzz off to Jude’s Macro Monday
