The Limnanthes or Poached Egg plant is now flowering all down the borders where it self seeded last year and doing its job well as a pollinator attractant.
One of my all time favourites is the Pyrethrum especially this deep shade with the contrasting centre.
A similar shade but different Style is Knautia macedonica. I love the airy feel of the plant and the way the flowers dance. The bumble bees love it too.
The Bumblers Also like The Comfrey flowers. I have quite a strip of this now and cut it in rotation for making concentrated plant food and layering in the compost heap as an activator. This bee has actually chewed a hole through the side of the flower to get to the nectar. Just as well i have the Russian clumping comfrey and don't depend on seed for next year but this behaviour will also give access to insects with shorter tongues than this bee.
While transferring some comfrey to the compost heap I was lucky to catch sight of something quite unusual. Not so much rare exactly but all the same seldom seen
Mr Mole! I guess he wouldn't be here if there wasn't plenty of worms.
Also providing food for the insects, but this time in the form of pollen are these gorgeous Oriental poppies.
Seemingly of more interest to flies than bees are my three or four clumps of Ox-eye daisy.
And as for the excitement I mentioned....The beekeeping course has now finished , i enjoyed it so much an learn a collossal amount, but, just as I had resigned myself to a winter of slow construction and, due to poor local availability,the dim possibility of obtaining some bees next year i got a call. Cue frantic activity and a new page to record it .
You get young moles on the surface at this time of year, looking for a territory. I think they're probably extremely fussy about soil conditions; I've seen for myself that moles have been restricted to one small area of the University Park in Oxford for at least fifty years.
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