The Catnip Made Flowers !

Now we've had some decent weather, things are starting to happen in the garden.

This is the one that surprised me the most. The catnip had started to get all leggy and woody, and I was starting to think we needed to dig it out and replace it with a new one. I was away for the weekend, and when I came back, it had changed from a straggly, scruffy mess to a plant with a mass of small trumpet-shaped white flowers.

Best of all, the flowers were attracting a nice slection of bumblebees, as well as a few honey bees from the local monastery. Most of them buzzed off as I got close, but I was able to get a snap of one of them that was totally engrossed in colecting pollen and nectar.

I've also added a photo of the ballerina. It's on it's second wave of flowers, and if you look closely you can just see a hoverfly's back end sticking out of one of the flowers. They do the same job as the bees, they collect nectar and pollinate things in the process. The ballerina is a kind of rose, but much closer to a wild rose type, with masses of simple small flowers about an inch across. This one has been with us for as long as we've lived in the house, and was a moving-in present from my mother. It was a lot smaller back then !

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