Can you believe it’s Thursday again already? I don’t know where the last few days have gone. This past week hasn’t gone to plan and life has felt cruel. I wasn’t going to write a post this week but looking at the garden photos we took on Saturday cheered me up – all the more reason to share them don’t you think?
We have a new addition to the garden, a blue hydrangea! I’ve wanted one for a while but they are surprisingly hard to find. Maybe I’ve just been looking in the wrong places.
Remember the butterfly feeder I blogged about a couple of weeks ago? We put it out in the front garden. That bit of clear plastic is what the sugar water sits in but it was empty so I folded it back in. Hopefully I’ll be able to get a photo of a butterfly feeding soon.
Oxeye Daisies. I’m loving these at the moment. They flower for ages and help the garden to look more established than it really is.
Dutch Iris buds slowly made their way up and then opened literally overnight after a hot day and a good watering.
The Feverfew is peppered with tiny buds. I sowed the seeds in a pot last year but the young plant wasn’t happy there. I put it in the ground in a last-ditch attempt to save it and it’s doing so much better.
You wouldn’t know it but there are all sorts of plants hiding under these nasturtium leaves; heather, poppies, bugloss, soapwort, dwarf buddleia marigolds and its own flowers. I’ve never known nasturtiums to grow so big!
Beautiful, beautiful sweet peas. If there’s one plant I’d like to have in the garden every year, year after year, it’s these. They smell so good – and don’t seem to mind my shoddy frame building.
Our purple geraniums from the plant sale are flowering – something thats been on my wishlist for a while. Scott’s Mum has a big patch of them in her garden and they look amazing when they all come in to flower. Also, where there are purple geraniums, there are bees!
I did a bad thing on Saturday. Scott spotted this bug on the patio and it looked quite unusual so I took a photo to help identify it later. In the process of turning round to show him the photo, I stepped on it 🙁 
So that’s our garden this week. Lots of sunshine, lots of colour.
Oh, some of my favourite flowers there – irises and sweet peas, and I’ve grown to love hydrangeas after disliking them for years. Gorgeous photos x
This is the first time I’ve planted Irises. Mostly in pots, although a few popped up in the front garden so I must have run out of room and chucked a few in – forgot all about it until they came up.
Love the hydrangea – the white one I planted recently is already flowering and it’s boosted my growing confidence no end. Annoyingly I can’t find blue ones round here any more – made even more annoying by buying one as a thank you present for my neighbour last summer – when all I could seem to find was blue ones!
I too am loving oxeye daisies – as is Kitty, they are the ones she likes to pick the most!
You garden is looking lovely Gemma,I wonder if it’s too late to sow sweet peas? I made a 5 ft willow leaf at the weekend and want to plant it in the ground to grow something up…
I do hope that you have stayed sunburn free this week *winks*
Thank you for joining in again m’lady *curtsies*
I found out that you can change the colour of a pink hydrangea to blue (and vice versa) but you can’t change a white one. So perhaps changing the colour of a pink one could be an option. Do post a photo of your willow leaf, I want to see! I could do with something like that for our sweet peas – thinking of buying something more permanent to stick in the ground next year. Bum has stayed covered this week!!
I want to find out more about your butterfly feeder – love the idea of having one in the garden. Your iris are gorgeous – and all the other flowers! I recently bought a fantastic little book for identifying little creatures and I think the bug might be a red headed Cardinal beetle.
Thank you Kriss! And for identifying the bug for me 🙂 The butterfly feeder is called a Butterfly Biome. I like that it’s all wood rather than plastic.
Wow your garden is looking wonderful – and so healthy. I have hydrangea envy once again – I bought a tiny one earlier this year and it’s taking an age to get established, I haven’t killed it yet though! I have a purple geranium which is also flowering it’s heart out, the bees really do love them don’t they – and given that there are 3 bumblebee nests in our roof eaves this year it’s quite a busy plant!
Thanks Catherine 🙂 I bought some feed for my hydrangea and it’s really helped it fill out and make the leaves look healthier. That’s a lot of bees!
i never seem to buy the sweet peas seeds that are scented. Hydrangeas remind me of my childhood, my gran had a wall of them around her front garden
I’m pretty sure my grandparents had a hydrangea in their garden too. As far as I know, only annual sweet peas are scented. The ever lasting sweet peas look as nice but don’t smell at all. It’s all about the scent for me…
I couldn’t help myself but I had to look up your beetle (RIP) and it seems it is a red-headed cardinal beetle. Apparently it is quite common but I’ve never seen one before!
Thank you for looking it up. The fact it’s a common bug makes me feel much better about stepping on it 🙂
So sorry your week hasn’t gone to plan.
So many beautiful flowers, I just can’t believe how well the Sweetpea is doing, ours are looking terribly sorry for themselves at the moment.
Love the new addition, hydrangeas are just amazing!
My sweet peas are still tiny and trying to fight off an attack from something. I do hope they make it because I too love the gorgeous smell of them.
I was really excited when we moved here and I found we’d got 2 hydrangeas in the garden. One of them is a lovely light pink and I think the other is a dark pink but I’m not 100% sure. My memory is terrible!
Such beautiful photos and flowers. I’ve planted irises in pots, only one looks even slightly promising at present! I love the idea of a butterfly feeder too.