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This is the second of my 7 day nature series on Facebook.
It appeared originally in https://derrickjknight.com/2014/04/29/a-fascinating-collage/
When we paid for Country Girl last week, Jackie also bought one of her favoured wrought iron candle holders for use as a planter. It has a screw fitted to adjust the height.
Today, I moved it to the gravelled concrete at the southern end of the garden. This involved moving a pile of bricks from where it now stands, and raking gravel to cover that corner. I had to evict a large number of woodlice, slugs, and, one snail.
Jackie had moved a few of the bricks earlier. Feeling the heat she must have removed her jumper, and slung it over the nearest available hanger, thus providing the Country Girl, now dubbed Florence, with a purple hair extension
The white climber is now making its way up the Agriframes Arch straddling the Brick Path.
The clump of geranium palmatums halfway down that shot draws bees so large that they weigh down the petals to which they cling whilst plundering the nectar.
Those plants are at the corner of the Dead End Path, alongside which a large philadelphus is in bloom.
Other plants attracting bees include poppies (this one also has a beetle)
and linaria.
Bees have shaken off so much pollen in the poppy that much smaller insects avail themselves of the bowl for a dust bath.
What, now, is this nosey creature entering the foxglove?
It’s a mosquito making a bee seem comparatively harmless.
My afternoon tasks including gathering up The Head Gardener’s weeding and clippings, and dead-heading roses, mostly in the Rose Garden where a few clematises like this
Hagley’s Hybrid have been incorporated for variety.
For our dinner this evening Jackie produced a stupendous beef stew with new potatoes. So tasty was this that when offered a choice of more stew, sticky toffee pudding, or more stew and sticky toffee pudding, I opted for more stew. That way, I reasoned, I could eat more. Jackie drank Peroni, and I drank Patrick Chodot Fleurie 2014, except for the glassful I knocked over the table, which was a shame.