Late summer and these two flower species are getting all the love from the pollinators, who pay a visit and end up thickly dusted in yellow pollen!
The last swifts have left my skies a couple of days ago, but we still have swallows and house martins. It is the time of the year when they find the cricket grounds I play on particularly attractive as an insect hunting ground.
Si
All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 18.08.23
I'm well aware I haven't been posting quite as much as usual lately; the insane heat has taken care of that as I've had no real desire to walk anywhere or do anything most of the time. It's just been far too hot.
That's not to say there hasn't been things to see or listen to; at work swallows and house martins twitter over the car park margins drawn in by the insects attracted to the drainage ditch at the bottom. Flocks of juvenile long tits work their way through the driveway trees with fummy little "zup" calls, while less cutely carrion crows are tearing apart the bodies of roadkill rabbits, long since dessicated and little more than piles of fur.
I've got additional plants in the garden, a scabious gifted me by my sister which really does bring in the pollinators; big hoverflies in particular seem to love it.
I've also taken joy from buying a new Amazon Kindle. I have an outdoors kit I keep in my small orange rucksack comprising of suncream, a microfibre camping towel and the aforementioned e-reader, an. d I can take it to the cafe at the park, or to cricket matches I seem to spend hours watching these days even when I'm not playing.
I sit and watch the bees patrolling the rudbeckia in the park and envy them; not the bees but the flowers - my rudbeckia hasn't done very well. They are a last blast of colour in the park, bright yellow suns that will fade as autumn begins.
I don't know what photographs I'm going to post; writing this blog has been a mystery, I've never known where my words will take me.
Si
All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 20.08.22
I haven't written about last week's cricket match; it was so staggeringly turgid and inept by me and ultimately all the rest of us the thought of writing about it brings me out in hives.
Instead, let me take you to the cafe at Sconce Park, and the beds of pollinator friendly flowers looked after by the ranger there. The echinacea and rudbeckia are loved by bees; on a sunny day virtually every flower head while have at least one bumble feeding away, which is why I've planted echinacea, albeit a bit late, and got a pot of rudbeckia for my own garden.
I'm rather enjoying this new hobby of gardening, although I've got various failed pots out there. My poppies have just died off, and the antirhynus just never sprouted at all. On the flip side my sunflowers are coming along, and my various seed bomb and wildflower mix planters have got all sorts of pretty little flowers growing, so I'm rather proud of that.
The joys of being nearly 50.
Si
All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 23.07.22
