Abundance

I seem to be posting about flowers and plants a lot at the moment. I'm sure it's because the garden is abundant and overflowing at this time of year, and there's so much to see and enjoy. Every day after work I go out into the garden and am thrilled to see that new blooms have opened overnight. This week the weather has been very hot indeed and the garden is looking a bit dusty and tired in places. B said to me the other day when we had a barbeque in the back garden "it looks like it needs a haircut out here", and she's right. Everything is starting to look quite overgrown. This was our front garden one evening two weeks ago, full of roses, peonies and geraniums. All around the garden now there are wonderful flowers vying with each other for attention.

Delicate, blowsy poppies with inky-dark centres. I love to watch their buds burst open, their silky petals unfolding like new butterfly wings.

Paper-thin geraniums, crinkly and finely-veined. They bloom in profusion and come back a few weeks after they've been cut back.

Sweet, old-fashioned dianthus looking as if they've been cut out with pinking shears, hence their other name of pinks. With a wonderfully deep spicy clove-like smell they look good at the front of the border in full sun.

Tall, graceful irises in shades of yellow and blue, fascinating in their tri-fold structure, their long strap-like leaves a cool blue-green.

Fabulous, showy peonies in deep pink, voluptuous and multi-petalled. 

Shades of purple - rich, velvety clematis ...

tiny star-like campanulas growing in our front wall ...

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intricately-constructed passion-flowers, amazing in their complexity ...

strongly-scented lavender, redolent of Elizabethan linen and pastel-coloured soap ...

tall spires of purple bells, each one with a spotty bee-path leading to the pollen. In folklore the bells are where fairy folk live.

Silvery astrantia, a little firework making modest explosions in the flower bed.

Now for the pinks - bright pink snapdragons, ready to 'snap' when pinched ...

pink and purple fuchsias, suspended like exotic flamenco dancers ...

large magenta clematis saucers scattered boldly down a fence.

Into the hot end of the spectrum now, with oranges and yellows in eye-scorching colours. A golden frilly-petalled geum ...

striped bi-coloured bidens, fiery and star-like ...

soft, pale yellow nasturtiums with their lily-pad leaves and red centres.

In corners of the garden there are bursts of colour. Here's a bright collection of flowers which please me greatly, despite the fact that it's all a bit overgrown. One evening late last week we had a prickly visitor here - a small hedgehog crunching snails.

At this time of year I love to bring the garden indoors, gathering lime green alchemilla, and sprays of sugary pink 'Mortimer Sackler' and deep red 'Guinea' rose, and putting them together in a vase on the windowsill. Such floral abundance is worth enjoying in these long, hot days and daily watering is a pleasure on cool evenings or early mornings. How I love it!