More Blooming Things

As promised, here's a look at what's going on in our garden now. We've moved on to mid-summer flowers, with more yellows and reds, and there's still a lot happening out there.

Above, a bee checking out the blossoms on our Senecio, or dusty miller, which I bought in Nunhead the day I finished the Green Chain walk. It's grown a lot since then!

Here's another bee, sheltering inside a geranium blossom on a recent rainy day.

And here's yet another bee, eagerly investigating one of the "Bishop's Children" dahlias.

Here's another type of dahlia, the first flower on our red variety. We have one more that hasn't yet bloomed, a yellow one, but it has buds so we should see flowers soon.

Our Crocosmia "Lucifer" has burst into flower...

...as has the Gaillardia, or blanket flower, I bought from Homebase a couple of weeks ago. It was a battered little plant on the discount shelf but it has grown into a nice, healthy specimen.

We have daylilies! Our daylilies didn't bloom at all last year, so I'm glad to get some flowers this year, even though they're doubles (or triples?) and I much prefer the single varieties. (They were here when we moved in -- we didn't plant them.) I've been trying to keep the surrounding foliage trimmed away so they get some sun, and it's nice to have that work rewarded.

And finally, we have a native-variety hogweed plant (not the scary giant kind) that has produced big, white discs of tiny flowers. There are almost always insects on them -- flies or beetles. I really like this plant, which has beautiful leaves, and I'm glad we let it grow. It first appeared next to the patio a couple of years ago but this is the first year it's been big enough to flower. I think it came from seeds I brought from Hampstead Heath.

So yeah, lots of activity!

Note: For those of you into copy editing, let me just say what a nightmare this post was! Genus names of plants are normally capitalized and italicized, which I tried to do here. But you'll notice I'm not consistent -- I didn't capitalize or italicize geraniums and dahlias, for example. My theory is that those are also the common names by which those plants are known so they can be more casually referenced. I went back and forth about how to handle this for about an hour and I know I do it differently every time I blog! As Emerson said, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."