Two pretty moths found in the garden this week

 This month we have had many butterflies and other flying insects in the garden, some I have already shown on my Six on Saturday posts. 

Small Purple & Gold Moth, Pyrausta aurata

Small Purple & Gold Moth, Pyrausta aurata

I have quite a few Marjorams and mints including Apple Mint  growing which are some of the larval food  plant for this species.

 White Plume Moth (Pterophorus pentadactyla)

White Plume Moth (Pterophorus pentadactyla)

Mr S rescued a Hummingbird Hawk Moth from the conservatory during the week. I am going to post these two moths photographed on the Somerset Moth website.

In a Vase on Monday - 31 July 2023

 Its been a rainy and dull week weather wise, but plants still keep growing, and inevitably from time to time some plants benefit from a severe cut back as there is still time for another good flush of flowers in the season.  One plant that works particularly well given this treatment is Potentilla nepalensis 'Miss Willmott'.

This first came to the garden as a small seedling from Alison who now has a flower farm, and recently when she came round my garden, she realised that hers had 'disappeared' and she was able to take a few back to her garden.  I love the way its strong but wiry stems weave their way through the border, and is particularly useful around the base of rose shrubs.

The Blue Vase is a Cloisonné Vase which brought back by my mother from China many years ago, it is a pair and my sister gave me one, so this vase is dedicated to her.  By its side is one of the Chinese figurines that Mr S and I picked up on our trip to China over twenty five years ago.

This week I have looked up all the elements included in the vase, for which two in particular has a scent that I find really pleasing: the Chamaemelum which also came from Alison and the Achillea.

Potentilla nepalensis 'Miss Willmott'

Chamaemelum nobile ‘Flore Pleno’

Achillea ageratum also called English Mace 

Sedum spectabile Autumn Joy

Pittosporum Garnettii

In a Vase on Monday is a weekly affair devised by Cathy and I link this post to hers as do several other people who like to arrange their garden flowers and greenery. 

Six on Saturday - End of July 2023

 It has been a strange sort of a week weather wise with very low light.  We have had some rain but as in the case with the weather yesterday it never did, though threatened several times with a shed load up somewhere on the Mendips, which explains why the reservoirs locally are 85% full.  Washing was dried outside, dead heading of roses and pruning back of rosemary, lavender and phlomis shrubs this week means the front garden resembles one of those men's hairstyles in vogue similar to the old fashioned short back and sides but with a few 'artistic' gouges, fauxhawks or side partings.  In a couple of weeks and for the next year it will look far better than if it had been left in the grunge rewilded format!

Six specifics now to remind myself of what caught my eye or rather the camera this week.  I join as many others do, under Jim's post:  Six on Saturday.

Here we go:

1: Diascia Personata is continuing to flower, with taller stems than I would like, needing to be helped to an upright position, maybe it is lacking in light.

2. As well as the above which was bought at a garden open day, this little Persicaria was bought at a road side stall of a garden, that was going to be open the following week.  It is called Persicaria Virginia 'Bat Wings', I have no idea of what it will be like, for now it is planted in the so called shady border.

3. In another part of the garden the rain and low light have suited Persicaria amplexicaulis 'Golden Arrow'. A small piece came as a present from my friend Maggie who does garden up on the Mendips and yes she does get a 'shed lot more rain' than we do on the windward of the hills. I'm looking forward to the elongation and seeing the bright flowers which will no doubt make an appearance on my 'In a Vase on Monday' Posts.

Persicaria amplexicaulis 'Golden Arrow'.

4. Close by the Golden Arrow is the fourth of the new rose collection.  Rose Home Florist Timeless Purple.

5. In the same area The Fuchsia 'Delta's Sara' had the nipping the growing tips action imposed on her starting when the shoots were just 15cm heigh, and this has given me a better sized shrub for the spot as compared with last year. As with the other Fuchsias in the garden the flowering season has begun.

Low down the first blooms are nicely offset by the dark leaves of Oxalis Triangularis.

6. Bumblebees: if I am sitting in the conservatory or peering out of the kitchen window I can tell straight away if it has stopped raining or the morning temperatures have risen from the activity of the bumblebees.  I am not a voyeur, but on seeing a couple of bumblebees on the ground, I was fascinated as to what they were doing.  Below a smaller bumble bee with yellow was a much larger one with no yellow markings but with the same red-tailed markings. Thanks to the Bumblebee Conservation Group I was able to identify these as the Red-tailed bumblebee (Bombus lapidarius)

I feel jittery, as we are waiting for arboriculturalists to arrive some time this coming week to tackle the vast overhanging branches or the ever green oak. When will they come? Communication is not that great, will the plants in the garden get damaged?  Protection is being considered, but in a few months time all this anticipation and anxiousness will be in the past.  We have another couple of projects in the pipeline which will involve a temporary removal/protection of plants.  How we gardeners 'suffer' if our little domaine undergoes such upheavals.  Do we feel too much for our gardens and plants?   

 

Pistachio and Preserved Ginger Biscotti - Perfect for Knitters

 Tomorrow the WI Monday Knit and Natters are coming over.  To go with coffee I tried out this recipe for Pistachio and preserved ginger biscotti and yes it is as the recipe said not hard, and they are just perfect.

I followed the recipe except that I made two logs from the same quantity of mixture to give smaller biscuits just the right size for me! I've printed off the recipe and this will be one for the file.

Lots of other Ottolenghi recipes with this link.

Six on Saturday - 22 July 2023

Yesterday I pulled out all stops and got the rest of my bulk order of mulch spread around the garden, the bulk bag folded up to contain bark chippings when we get some branches on the holm oak cut back, and the drive hosed down.  I certainly deserved a well done from Mr S when that was done. In between I got on with a few activities in the garden including taking some pictures for today's Six on Saturday

1. A few weeks ago I fancied a few more yellows in the gravel garden and added this Delosperma 'Suntropics Cream' I sense this was named cream as some people wouldn't want yellow, the yellow centre is what attracted me. 

2. The daisy type flowers as well as the Oreganums and Eryngiums  have been magnets for a large number of bees and butterflies.  During this week a variety of different white tailed bumblebees, and so many butterflies including Comma, Peacock, Red Admiral, Small Tortoiseshell and Blue, and many other flying insects have been visiting the garden.  At one time when we were sat outside having our lunch we witnessed many ants flying off in a cloud, form various spots around the garden. Mr S has had 'fun' saving butterflies and bees from the conservatory with the butterfly net.

3. The biennial Eryngium Giganteum Silver Ghost has probably the maximum number of plants I would want on the edge of the gravel area. It lights up that part of the garden and looks wonderful in the late evening.

As far as the bumble bees are concerned the more of these flowers the better.

4. On the small veggie area the Dwarf French Bean Purple Queen really looks as if she want to climb. After taking this picture I decided to add a few sticks with black mesh suspended on Mr S's arrows that served a similar purpose around the Mangetout crop which has now been cleared. I hadn't wanted to use long bean sticks and phase them out, but I have a few in reserve just in case.

5. The beetroot have continued to provide some lovely roots, and I have planted the last of the Courgette 'Sure Thing' plants, just two plants!  I bought two plants of indeterminate varieties of courgette earlier , one has started to fruit, and the second plant looked more like some other sort of very trialing cucurbit, but I removed that and started some of my own courgette seed. More about the courgette Sure Thing when they have grown a little and are starting to fruit.

6.  Often I am impatient and impulsive in the garden I can also be patient and intolerant when it comes to plants in the garden.  I can wait two years for a seed to germinate, or suddenly decide to remove a reasonably good plant from the garden, or I can see some interesting plant do all the research, but still buy on impulse from a nursery.  We were on our way back from Taunton and called into Greenshutters Nursery.  They didn't have the type of Ginko I was looking for and instead bought Echinacea purpurea Magnus. It is already planted up in the space vacated by a 'removed' plant.

Maybe because this little plant just looks wonderful when it is in flower, this unknown sedum may have arrived in the garden with something else, or maybe was just lurking in the garden when we arrived, it has somehow escaped the 'delete' 'remove' 'dig up' action that I am often prone to, so I am a mixed up gardener tolerant as well!

 Not all of us strictly keep to the six rule, and sometimes can stretch into six, whatever we do we are mildly treated by our chief gardener Jim who is the current leader of this weekly get together.  No doubt there will many nuggets of interesting knowledge, beautiful plants or other things in gardens scattered mainly around the UK but also further afield.