Igenlode Wordsmith

Just about everything is now in flower (including the coriander, oops!)
Even the Cumbrian yellow poppy turned out to have thrown up a fresh crop of flowers, probably as a result of the rain, though they are practically invisible behind the peas, rosehips, and field poppies that have grown up in front of them since earlier in the year -- photo at extreme arm's length :-)

We have a belated extra opium poppy, long after the others have been reduced to no more than ripening seedheads:

The first of the rudbeckias have opened, with many more to come, and the marigolds are starting to bloom, still in their striking red-and-gold stage before their colour evens out to a mature orange.

One of the nasturtiums has also opened, although I have to say that this 'compact heirloom' variety (Alaska Mix) is a bit disappointing, since the flower colour is now, in the third or fourth generation, a pale orange rather than the "bright gold, rich mahogany and salmon" originally promised, which is frankly hard to distinguish in the sunlight from the cream-mottled foliage -- this is clearly the genetically dominant shade! Either that, or all the seed that has survived happens to have descended from a parent of this colour...
Here is a low-level photo with a decent amount of visible contrast - sadly since they are at ankle height (otherwise desirable, since the taller species are now causing serious difficulties with my washing lines), I don't normally get to see them from this angle :-p



I have been assiduously dead-heading the sweet peas, the only flower where I actively do so (the other annuals are left to set seed however they like, since they seem to continue blooming anyhow -- the California poppies and pot-marigolds are still sending out new flowers even though I have now been able to harvest the first ripened seed from them!) The sweet peas are doing extremely well this year, possibly because I ended up with six plants that are hence producing a lot of scented flowers between them! Though they are using up a lot of large pots...

Self-sown cornflowers are absolutely rampant everywhere, including the box of 'purple mix' where they have evidently dominated everything else -- ideally the seed would have been spread more thinly along an entire border, but I don't have the space, so the plants had to fight it out and the coloured cornflowers evidently won :-p (That was only half a small packet of giveaway seed left over from last year: I wasn't expecting quite such vigorous results!)


On the other hand I don't think anything has germinated from my belated sowing of the now-elderly "Flowers for Birds" buckwheat-shell mix, which I shook out pretty vigorously over the wildflower trough after finally being able to remove the tulips. Possibly at the bottom of the packet it really is mostly the buckwheat husks that are used "to make sowing easier" https://mr-fothergills.co.uk/blogs/news/new-royal-horticultural-society-s-flower-seed-mixes-oh-sow-simple or else the seed is now simply too old.
There are a lot of things growing in the trough, but they seem to be the ones I recorded as already present back at the start of May when I lifted the tulips: self-sown marigolds, camomile, forget-me-nots, and poppies. In addition I do have what looks like a self-sown Swan River daisy and calendula (pot-marigold), a young California poppy that I consciously tolerated there although I have been assidously uprooting the seedlings everywhere else, and yet more self-sown flax and cornflowers. I have been doing my best to keep on top of the shoo-fly seedlings, which are growing *everywhere*; I have allowed two of the plants to grow to adulthood, both of which are now flowering in pots of their own, but they do tend to take over, and I have been pulling them out of the wildflower trough quite ruthlessly.

The garlic in the trough (planted in November) has now died back, and I managed to get the bulbs out without doing *too* much damage to the roots of the little marigold growing next to them, which has its first flower buds. They have cloved up beautifully, though of course they are not of a commercial size -- but since it was just self-sprouted cloves from the vegetable rack, it is something created from nothing :-)
(Seen here with measuring spoon for scale - click for full image)

Actually I think the larger of the two, assuming that was the one that was planted earlier and didn't get delayed by having to straighten itself out, was the clove from *last* year's bulb...