Sometimes stepping into the garden on a summer morning is a little like stepping into something holy, or sacred, or mystical, or magical, or whatever word you would use. I like being out around 9:00 am once the dew has mostly disappeared and the bees and butterflies are actively feeding on all the sunny flowers. It’s full of life.
Heliopsis helianthoides ‘Summer Sun’, Agastache blue fortune – anise hyssop, and Russian sage. It might be a metallic green bee on the heliopsis. The bees and flies are starting to discover the agastache – which will soon be a huge attraction in the garden. This arrangement is in my “drought garden” right off the patio.
If you want to see butterflies, moths, and other interesting creatures head to the northeast corner of the garden where coneflower, joe pye weed, and liatris spicata are blooming. These native flowers are always buzzing with life.
Joe Pye Weed ‘Gateway.’ Once the bees start working the flowers they look a little frazzled.
Quite a few times this week I have seen clearwing moths – hummingbird moths – on the liatris spicata. It is hard to get a good close-up. They move quickly!
A small brown moth was carefully working over this purple coneflower – Echinacea purpurea. Can you see the tiny yellow flowers at the tips of the cone spikes?
It looks like some kind of skipper butterfly is resting or sunning itself on a bok choy leaf.
The black-eyed susans are starting to bloom now. Here a fly is resting.
Speaking of flies.. In seven or eight spots on the asparagus plant the flies seems to be having some kind of orgy or group experience of some kind. They have been in this position for the past 24 hours….
Juvenile robins being territorial or bossy. I usually post pleasant pictures at the birdbath, but there is a lot of ‘king of the hill” that happens here. As I sit in my home office during the week I have a good view of the birdbath, and it is interesting to see who is waiting in line and who is being bossy.
These zinnias are also easy to see from my office window. I have both shorter and taller zinnias planted here. They bring in gold finches and butterflies, but right now they are not nearly as exciting to the wildlife as the native flowers. Still their beauty across the yard really cheers me up while I am working and they bring beneficial insects near the vegetable garden.
The vegetables need to be picked and dealt with every day now. This was probably the fifth huge cauliflower we picked and cooked. It is purple from the nearby mulberries where the birds had been visiting. Today I had a big bowl of cauliflower soup with new potatoes, kale, and green beans from the garden, mixed in with some cans of beans and a few other ingredients.
We still have some everbearing strawberries blossoming, since we have had a lot of cool, wet weather. The delicate colors caught my eye as I walked by. Most of the berries are done now, though I have still been trying to forage for mulberries in the easement each morning for my cereal.
I picked up a cheap white table on sale yesterday to put under my umbrella. Now I can sit and read in the shade at lunch without balancing things on my lap. I also repotted some of my house plants yesterday. It was a good day to play with water from the hose as I cleaned up. No problem having a green lawn this year.
Ducks at Lake Katherine, where I take walks several times a week.
If you have made it this far you know that I put in a lot of pictures this week! This was because I did not blog last week, so I was choosing from 179 photos that were on my camera. It is a beautiful time of year and impossible to capture and share everything that is going on.
Little Backyard World 
Great pics! =-)
Thanks!
Yes! I agree with you about the garden being a mystical place, full of earth magic. Part of that is realizing what a lot of other life forms we share our garden spaces with. Your pictures show this really well. I’m too lazy to take good bee and hummingbird pictures, but I always feel blessed when I see these creatures making a living from plants in my garden.
Right. Sometimes we miss all the life right around us and how we are part of that living world. There is a lot of crazy and beautiful stuff going on around us this time of year.
Just beautiful pictures. I am fascinated with all bug life even the flies. They can be a pain in the butt… However looking close the iridescence and complexity of the eye structure is incredible. Just wish they didn’t create maggots in the bins lol. I think I see your namesake flower 🙂
The flies were right near the compost pile. Recently a lot of mulberries have fallen onto the pile from the tree above and the flies seem to be really busy in that area, which is not near the house. We really have a lot of birds in the yard this year and sometimes I see them standing in the compost pile, so they are helping themselves to those maggots. But yes, they have amazing eyes! You are right, I have two cultivars of Joe Pye weed and this is the taller one.
Maybe the flies are drunk off rotting mulberries! A drunken fly orgy, I think that’s the most repulsive thought I’ve considered all day….
You are right that this time of year is magical, all the freshness of summer is still there without the drought and buildup of disease you see later in the season. I could sit outside all day and still not get enough birds and bugs and breeze to make me want to go inside again.
I envy your cauliflower. Didn’t you even say it was a mistake!? After a third nibbling by deer or woodchucks mine doesn’t seem anxious to do much of anything, let alone flower!
Frank
Yes the cauliflower was a mistake, but we are really enjoying that mistake! It was a nine-pack that we thought were collards…. I looked back at our garden this time of year two years ago – in my other blog – pardonmygarden.wordpress,com – and the lawn was completely brown. We really had drought that year, so we are enjoying the green while we have it.
It truly is a great time of year with so many things in bloom. And your photos are beautiful, except maybe the fly cluster 😉 Isn’t it great to have a spot to sit outside in the garden? I spend as much time out in it as I can and the house shows it.
My house could use some new paint inside, but I can’t seem to get enthusiastic about it. Yes it is great to be outside this time of year!