An all-orange post

Orange is not really one of my favourite colours, but it surely is cheerful and energy-boosting:

Bedding plants... in pink

Cosmos has been the star performer of this summer; the plants have grown well and healthy and they produce plenty of flowers.  While taking photos of them, however, I also noticed something unpleasant. Since there are both aphids and ants on the plants, one could easily imagine a nasty mutualistic relationship between them.  Well, I took a pair of thin plastic gloves and picked and squashed them all.

The marguerite daisies have been slow to grow, but now they start looking established.  After a rainy night, they look more vigorous and happy:

I don't know from where the light blue shade of these photos comes; let's say the petals reflect the blue sky of a beautiful summer morning...

On a warm summer afternoon

For about a week, we have been able to enjoy warm, almost hot, weather.  In the morning, it is lovely to go outside wearing only shorts and a t-shirt, but in the afternoon, 28 - 30 degrees Celsius start to be too much, especially if the weather is humid.

Thunderstorms and rain may cool the air for a while.

It's lovely to stay in the shade of the garden trees and observe for example the large leaves of the flowering raspberry (Rubus odoratus)...

...or to raise one's eyes and look up to the branches of an old pine:

Admiring treetops is soothing, isn't it?

Gazania

...seems to open its flowers only when it's sunny and warm.

Early morning dew

It has been raining much in the last days.  It's not late summer yet, but during the nights dew forms on thin, exposed surfaces:

Flowers to M

A very dear person has started his military service today.   M., these flowers are for you!

Lupins

These photos were taken two years ago with a mobile phone. It was one of those cloudy evenings, when colours do look very intense, yet I must admit the vivid green looks almost unreal.

This one had a strong, red colour.  Unfortunately, last summer the plant had already disappeared:

The beginning

“The first gardens were not made, but discovered. A natural spot – a clearing in the forest, a valley opening up in a barren mountainside, an island in a remote lake – made pleasant by a belt of trees, flowering, fragrant, and bearing fruit.  The hum of bees mingles with the tinkling fall of water, for a stream winds across the tranquil scene.  In the centre there is a grassy space, and the grass is rich with flowers.”

Christopher Thacker: The History of Gardens, p. 9.