Garden flowers for a change!

Impressive array of flowers, sadly I have to much shade for quite a lot of them to thrive in my garden so will enjoy yours

Wonderful array of flowers I adore your Hollyhocks.

Me too - its a grand display of hollyhocks - especially that orangey one. It nice to see you have some Red Admirals. I haven't seen any butterflies at all on our buddleja.
I'm quite jealous of your cherry plum!

Shade is good Bjs! Especially now they tell us we will get hotter summers. Loads of lovely things you can grow in the shade.

Thrupennybit - Thank you for reading the blog, I like the Hollyhocks until they get caught in the wind and bend and flop everywhere. It's only then that I think I should have staked them before they got big! Some of them are well over 6 fot tall and others growing in another place only about 3 foot tall, so I suppose it depends on the soil. The shorter ones are more manageable at least.

Strange you haven't seen any butterflies on the Buddleia Stera, it's supposed to be an exceptionally good year for butterflies and we seem to have loads frolicking about, the next blog is going to be about them, so it's back to the wildlife! Not sure you would be jealous if you saw the ground under the huge tree we have. It's massive and shades Boris and the girl's shed. One of about five we have dotted about, all with fruit and homes for the pigeons and possibly a Magpies nest this year. Now they are starting to fall, Boris does a lot of stumbling about on round cherry plums! Quite funny if I didn't feel sorry for him, he's off to the Vets tomorrow, his eyes don't look right, so he will be sitting in a cardboard box with OH beside him making sure he doesn't try to get out! Could be old age or something else, we'll see, old age for Boris that is not my 'in his prime' OH.

At the bottom of my hill is a cottage that every year has huge hollyhocks that grow right against the house wall & the edge of the roadside, I'm always amazed as there doesn't appear to be any soil for them.
Further up the hill are some more again growing at the base of a wall, they apparently like this position.
Glad to hear you have loads of butterflies as I heard it was a bad year for them but the Big Butterfly Count starts today (http://bigbutterflycount.org/) 14 July - 6 Aug.
My white Buddleia is just about to flower ready for them.
Made me laugh imagining Boris at the vets, when I had to take mine we put him in a sack with his head poking out & carried him in in our arms :)
Hope the vet can give you some eye drops for poor Boris.

Thanks Green finger for the best wishes for Boris! I am adding a blog about his visit, but he is OK and we got some antibiotic drops for his eye. Your idea of a sack would probably have been better, he sat in a box with his head out and behaved, but the car needed fumigating after!
Strange how Hollyhocks seem to grow anywhere, we get them come up in rock hard paths, between edgings as well as more suitable soil - the power of survival I expect.

Hm yes, it's a very distinctive smell, isn't it? My daughter was known in the area as the goose girl, she would sit in their shed for hours talking to them. They all had names & at egg laying time we had to felt tip the initials on their eggs as otherwise they would pinch each others eggs. eg: Molly would go wet her feathers & have a drink leaving her 10 eggs, when she came back there would only be 3 left but Polly would strangely have 19 & so on ....lol.
They are so funny! When a windfall apple would drop they would all rush to be first to get it.
We also used to gather armfuls of cleavers for them, they were mad for that but discovered that they would run away from radishes.

Love all the flowers and your Hollyhocks look great. I had to dig mine up here as they had been planted by previous owners and all had rust. Glad to read that Boris is ok. It is such a worry when our pets are unwell.

(Honeysuckle: Whenever I see your name I imagine Inspector Foyle's driver, so you are stuck with that image for me! )

You're very fortunate to have many butterflies about, Ours are few and far between. Sir David Attenborough today was commenting on their low numbers. Guess pesticides are responsible as they are for the low numbers of bees. I get really excited when I see any of the latter around.

Your garden is beautiful. I love the Hollyhocks ... I haven't grown them for years. Maybe I will next year :)
The second succulent I think is the one you wanted to know the name of ... it's Euphorbia suzannae x bupleurifolia.
The pink shrub looks to me like a type of Escallonia ... I could be (and probably am) wrong ! lol

Thanks Jen, I do like Hollyhocks, something fundamentally nostalgic about them, probably all those chocolate boxes that had pictures of cottages with roses and hollyhocks! We have had some with rust, but most are OK, just full of holes in the leaves from various bugs. The flowers make beds for sleeping bees at night and watching the bees during the day get smothered in pollen, it's a wonder they can fly!

What a thought Eirlys! It would be lovely if I looked anything like the pretty Honeysuckle Weeks, once upon a time I was thinner, but age has thickened everything out and I don't suppose I will get back to that again!
The butterflies seem to be about in fair numbers, next blog will have pictures of them and their caterpillars. I didn't do the butterfly count yesterday, it was overcast and I just forgot! Friend of OH here who is a butterfly fan says it's a really good year for them, so perhaps it's a local area thing. As for the bees, it's only in the last week or so that I have seen the large Bumblebees about and some of the wild honeybees, loads of the small bumblebees everywhere.

Thanks Hywel for the name of the succulent, it certainly looks like it when checking on the web. I bought it at a talk on cacti and succulents and didn't realise it hadn't got a label! So now I shall be able to put one in and know how to look after it. It has just been re-potted from it's tiny pot.
I think you are probably right about the Escallonia, rings a distant bell somewhere, might be 'apple blossom', but it's been tucked away behind some more shrubs so I will cut some of them back and give it a more prominent view. It's beside a Ceanothus, goodness knows which one, but it's got a bit rampant. That bit of the garden got planted with all sorts, just to fill it at the time, not the best way to garden!

GF's story about the egg thieves really made me laugh!
Its odd that butterflies are plentiful in some places and not others. Hardly any here and we have usually had loads of red admirals and speckled woods.
Honeysuckle, planting up with all sorts definitely rings a bell here...

You're welcome Honeysuckle ... glad to help :)