A place in the shade

With the beautiful high temperatures we enjoyed over the weekend a place that looked quite tempting at times was my back hedge, this was the site for my snowdrops earlier in the year, it is also where my hellebore's are just about coming to an end for another year, you now have to look harder for the secrets hidden in amongst the thickening green foliage. I have just about maintained enough interest along the hedge, aquilegias are in flower along with these wild garlic

I was warned when I bought these that they would spread vigorously, I was so excited because I love wild garlic, they remind me of my holidays in Pembrokeshire where the smell of them is fantastically strong, in the wooded valleys, I can't wait for them to have colonised the whole of my back hedge. I have now had them in my garden for four years and today I can count just twelve flower heads, at this rate it will be another ten or so years before they have achieved the desired effect, then I will probably decide that the smell is far to strong to have outside my bedroom window, but at the moment I think they are wonderful.

If you look really hard you can also find these lily of the valley.

You can see how small the flowers are , the green seed head hanging over them is one of my snowdrops.

I have plenty of lily of the valley leaves poking out of the soil, but these are the only flowers I could find this year. So pretty and delicate.

colour here we come

A Beautiful sunny day here in Staffordshire and my early summer flowers are starting to emerge.

My first poppy flower for 2010

This water avens (geum rivale) has been in flower for a couple of weeks now but I think it is looking glorious today

I just love aquilega

I do think that bugle (ajuga) works so well with forget-me not,

 as you can see forget me not is everywhere in my garden, I love it,  I think the name did it for me! It won me over as a child, and I will always have it in my garden, however hard Mr S. tries to get rid of it.

I might get out again later and take some more photo's, something tells me this could be a good day for butterflies when it warms up a bit  x

noon visitor

Just as I was tweeting, on twitter, about swifts flying over my garden this arrived with its distinctive loud buzzing, and settled on the sill next to me. I went into panic mode for a short while then composed myself, grabbed my camera took a couple of very hasty photos, I then found a suitable container to trap it in so I could release it back into the Staffordshire skies.

Speckled Wood

Today we were visited by this beautiful speckled wood butterfly, it was attracted to one of my favourite garden spring flowers the forget-me-not.

This isn't the first speckled wood I have seen this year, but it is the first one I've seen in my garden, so it deserves a mention.

enjoy x

My Spring Garden

I love watching my garden grow. I like to see how it flows throughout the seasons, watching as flowers pop up and gradually disappear again as new flowers start to open up. I haven't given much thought as to where I should position each plant and once I have planted them I tend to leave them to their own devices and allow a great deal of self seeding to happen, I do weed but living where we do weeding is somewhat of a losing battle!
But this is how my front strip is looking at the moment,

You can also see the mass of dandelions beyond my garden, please let those seeds float off away from my garden.

You can see more dandelions on my third blog .Beyond My Gate

dandelions aren't my favourite flower but I do think that this week they really have been quite stunning.