Just having a Dawdle round the garden

One of my all time favourtites

Never grown Guara before but love it

Agapanthus looking for the  Sun  (good luck)

Pinapple Guava very beautiful palnt

Another name forgotten  :( and considering the storms we had had over the past few weeks I am surprised there is anything left in the garden,) A friend has just told me the name of the plant which is of course a Gallardia.  

A Kind of Pottering Day

One thing I do love about May/June is all the wonderful aromas in the garden and the Catalpa tree with it's beautiful flowers which are approx. 3-6 cm across, trumpet shaped, white with yellow stripes and purple spots inside; they grow in clusters of 10-30 and the wonderful scents flow over you whislt sitting on the patio.

The Sambuca is just a mad rambling plant black with fabulous big saucer like flowers, no smell but great to look at, and I have heard that you can dip the flowers into a tempura batter and eat them. I did this with elderflower once and although ok have not tried it since.

My minature Iris ledgers were massed with flowers this year and I have had to remove a lot of them as they multiply and take over.

Lillies are always beautiful and if I can just catch the lily beetle before they start to lay there eggs I can save the plant, this year I lost 5 plants as I wasn't quick enough.

Lastly I have this pathetic larkspur which should be a metre high by now. I have only once managed to grow this successfully and if you know a secret on how to make them grow, then please tell me. The one and only time they succeeded they were massed with flowers and when cut and displayed in a vase lasted for almost three weeks and were stunning. I have bought 9 packets of seeds and this is what I got grrrr, still I will try again in September.

 Happy gardening

Misumena Vatica

Well I certainly Misssed-U-Mena   last year when the Lily beetles attacked and stripped most of my lilies almost overnight. So there I was strolling around my garden looking at my labours of love last night, and the madonna lillies are out and looking fabulous, and then I looked at a few others and saw a small white thing on the end of one of the flower heads. I thought it was a deformed flower head on the plant, on looking closer to my horror I saw this white crab looking spider with a red dash on it.

I ran into the house and grabbed my camera and took a shot, light was against me but gave me enough to search the web and find out that she is a very useful little spider to have around. Here she is happily protecting my lilies, bless her little socks, so if you see this little lady just say hi and leave her in peace, as for me I hope she stays around for awhile. I have no idea if this is a male or female really!

I found this information on wikipedia along with  the fabulous photo below, and which tells you more about this spider and how it can even change from white to yellow, found it quite fascinating as I have never seen one here before. Also discovered that it's hunting and not really protecting my plants at all. So everything I just said above is not entirely true.Oh well

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misumena_vatia