I spent the day

amazed at how many bees visited this lace cap hydrangea. In fact seeing so many of them made me decide to become a digital beekeeper.

technically not a bee but a hoverfly or flowerfly. There are loads of them

around in the garden visiting the flowers.

One of my favourites

Geum chiloense 'Mrs Bradshaw'

Geum coccineum 'Borisii'

Each year I have been collecting the seeds of these Geums and adding the seedlings to the garden.

I love them! They are bright and unfussy and more importantly the bees love them as well.

Have you ever seen the back of the cosmos?

The front's not too bad looking either..Cosmos bipinnatus 'Sensation Picotee'

And sometimes you just get lucky...

This bee landed on the flower just as I was taking the picture

I've been told....

....to start posting 'bouquets of flowers', so not to disappoint too much, let me go back to when I started taking photo's of what's in bloom in the garden this year, which was in June. Up till then there wasn't really that much flowering. This year we have had the longest winter I can remember. On the upside, when the weather warmed up we had daffodils, tulips, aquilegias, grape hyacinths, geums, alliums and apple blossom all competing to put on a great show. 

My mum sent me tulips from Holland last year. Queen of Night was an absolute stunner. Probably the darkest tulip available. They flowered for weeks, even now the leaves haven't died back yet in the tubs.

Up close you can seen how it looks like a true black and deserves the name Queen of Night.

Question...

Does black pollen mean black honey? 

This bee on my Oriental Poppies 

has so much pollen stored on it's 

legs it had a hard time during lift off.