Colours of May

Grasses pop up all over the place in our garden, and we often leave them to see how they turn out. This one has wonderful conical plumes of flowers which are hard to photograph.
The poached egg plant (Limnanthes) attracts lots of insects, and gives a great splash of colour for a couple of weeks. In the really hot weather earlier in the month they drooped badly, but revived. This patch is in the end of one of our raised vegetable beds.
This is only surviving plant of the heritage broad beans we planted from seed I got from Garden Organic. I think it is called "Crimson flowered". We only planted about 5 seeds and didn't soak them beforehand. We still have a few left over for autumn planting. Having had such poor germination with these I soaked a commercial variety "The Sutton" and we have had about 80% germination.

Having been thinking of what I would show for May, I was surprised that the overall impression isn't just of greens.

For quite a bit of the month, the predominant colour was green.

But look at all these other colours:

Looking back up towards the house from about halfway down the garden you get to see some of the red poppies.
These irises turn up all over the place. Sometimes we put them there, sometimes the birds do. They give an amazing splash of colour for a few weeks.

Some years we pick some and have them in a tall white glass vase on the front room windowsill with some of the poppies.
This hazy image is of the fruit on the small mulberry tree towards the bottom of the garden.

I'll try for a better image for June.
Likewise for this berry we planted last year.
Before starting to show some graduated pinks here is another case of insect camouflage.

See my earlier post about gooseberry sawfly.

Here in a wall pot, are some neatly arranged small green eggs laid on a nasturtium leaf.

Taken with my mobile phone above head height, so not the best image.

And now for some of the many pink flowers we have.

This viburnum has had the best flowers this year. Usually it gets too dry before the flowering season, and some of the leaves shrivel up.

Anyway, somehow it has excelled this year, and has looked like this for weeks.
This weigela has also flowered well, with enormously weighty flower spikes.
All over the place we have self-seeded columbines (Aquilegia), mostly this pink, but some dark blue.
We recently planted this group of alliums which have turned up trumps.

And finally ........ this is a bit of a cheat, as I didn't manage to take this picture until 1st June, (from the bathroom window, in the pouring rain).

This gives the overview of our garden from the house with odd splashes of colour.

Now to add the link back to Sue's "Colors of May" posting so that I can share these images with friends from all over.