e seem to have a broad variety of bees in our garden, and whilst pratting about photographing them I started to idly wonder what species they were, in that weird science-y way that sometimes comes over me... Thus, I found my new favourite toy from the always gothically mysterious, Natural History Museum: Bombus. Amazing. And so -
this is B. terrestris, the Buff-tailed bumblebee. Probably a worker but possibly a queen; the tail is quite yellowish.
This is a southerly specific bee, B.hypnorum or Tree bumblebee. Can't decide between queen, worker or male from this shot.
The wings are in the way here and its a bad angle for looking at his/her bottom... I know it's not terrestris by comparison so on that basis I'm going with B. lucorum the White-tailed bumblebee, but I'm not convinced.
the best thing about this game is that I know there's other species in the garden yet to be photographed...
our years ago, when we moved in to this flat and reclaimed the garden, very little was left to give that 'garden' feeling. I can list them very easily: winter honeysuckle, two neon pink roses, a leaf of a sedum which somehow grew into a clump, forget-me-nots, bluebells, a creamy peony and a half dead hydrangea. Oh and the one bramble we left in for fruit. That was it - literally. Every single other growing thing was added by us, including the lawn. This short list left quite large expanses of empty borders to deal with.
argely my approach was to dump whatever we managed to beg, steal and grow from seed into the available gaps based on what colours I wanted to see together with a cursory nod to conditions said plant would like to grow. Chaos was added by leaving anything to that wanted to self seed to it's own devices. Now, last year 
o, my amateurish photo essay is over and no doubt the blog probably takes about 10 years to load up now. I suspect it matters not. The fond farewell to spring was ultimately timely though because summer hit London Town with a vengeance this weekend. Everything flopped in the extreme heat - me, Dan, cats, plants. A mass wilting in the garden. Upside: I managed to wash virtually every textile in the house as each load took approximately 10 seconds to dry in the heat.
here was nothing for it, but to watch the embryonic peas grow and eat barbequed products to excess. We had our first barbe of the season and to be honest, eating was all that happened all weekend. Massive South Indian curry on Friday night to celebrate our 6th anniversary, farmers market on Saturday morning, barbeque Saturday and Sunday evening. We have been eating large amounts of asparagus whilst it's in season, rather decadently for breakfast with poached eggs and stone baked English muffins. It was also the first appearance of strawberries at the market, from our favourite farmer who was the direct inspiration for our egremont russet apple tree. Mmmmm strawberries. They were good, all gone now...
tell a lie, we did achieve something. All the tomatoes, cucumbers and aubergines were potted up into their final positions. I bought a load of these 
