There are still plenty of flowers for the pollinators to make use of in mid August: cyclamen are beginning to flower just before their foliage comes up, persicaria, Japanese anemone, nepeta, erigeron, plox, selinum, potentilla, heuchera, tierella, geum, salvia, sweet peas, roses, verbena, lamium, wooly rock jasmine, some hellebores, some verbascum, honey suckle, fennel and oregano all still going.  Just going over now are the  purple loosestrife, pond lily and pickerel weed.  There are a few sporadic flowers on the astrantia and hardy geraniums and campanula.  Some shrubs and small trees think that autumn has come early and are colouring up and leaves are falling so it is time to get the pond net out to start clearing the fallen leaves off the surface.  The rhododendron still looks poorly. Everything needs a good drink but we are still just getting the odd small shower that is hardly getting very deep so I am still having to water certain plants.  The white phlox is looking great but the label says Phlox paniculata ‘ice cream’  but when I googled it they should be pinkish flowers or white flowers with pink centres.  This may have been wrongly labelled and could be ‘White admiral’ instead.

I have moved the succulents that were in the conservatory onto the bench now as we did have a start date for getting the conservatory fixed in August.  That has now changed  to September so I have just left them on the old bench for now.

The front garden is not looking great just now as the perriwinkle is all dried and brown and there is nothing in flower except the weeds.  The mahonia and epimediums are looking ok as is the hedge so there is still some greenery.  The Virginia creeper is doing well so it should colour up well in autumn.  I would like to get more lavender and a few other drought resistant flowering plants out in the front garden for next year.

While I am out in the morning doing the watering I usually come across some bug or other.  I was watching a wasp trying to get a grip of a dried mealworm that had fallen from the bird food.  It had a real wrestle with it but gave up.  I try to look up the Latin names of the beasties I find but they can be hard to identify so I have no idea if they are what I think they are.

Pentatoma rufipes (Forest shield bug)

wasp wrestling 1/2 dried mealworm

Tachina fera flies mating on selinum

Athalia rosae (turnip sawfly)

Babies breath and unknown  rose

Phlox paniculata White admiral?

Honesty seed heads backlit

Pots on the patio August 2022

Succulents on the old bench

From the patio August 2022

Excuse the photo of the view from the patio – yes it has the bottom of the bird feeder on it!  You can see how the deep shade creeps up the garden from the back due to the trees in the golf course.  By 16:00 most of the garden and part of the patio is in deep shade.  We used to be able to have BBQs in the afternoon in the summer sunshine, and have our dinner out on the patio at 18:30 but sadly not any more.  This year however, the shade has been a blessing in during the heat waves.