This week's garden favourites

A few minutes ago I was inspired to go round the garden with a camera. I am waiting for some laundry to finish, and this was a fun way to pass the time.

Firstly, right at the back door, and now fortunately elsewhere, a hardy geranium. I think that this is Geranium oxonianum thurstonianum.

Then one that I haven't been able to identify yet. We call it "small white", although it is slightly off white. It grows like mad and seeds itself everywhere, but is easy to identify at a young stage.

This allium is nearly through with flowering, but has been looking splendid for the past couple of weeks.

Phacelia gets sown as a green manure in our raised vegetable beds, and I always try to keep it growing until it flowers. The form of the flowers and the scent make it one of my favourites.

I think that this is a Tiarella. It is an unassuming plant that has spread to a few locations over the year. The tiny flowers start off cream and turn red with time/pollination? 

We have finally established flag irises in the margins of our pond.

The small maple tree we moved in 1995 has more flowers on it than ever.

The first few of these poppies are out, and as you can see a snail has climbed into the centre. That doesn't worry me as then it isn't eating my salad leaves.

Our viburnam is just getting going.

We have aquilegias all over the place, and frequently pull them up.

Blue flowers don't photograph well for me, but the form shows even if the colour is distorted.

Uggh slugs! ... or the trials of a cool wet "summer"

As has just been officially announced, we have had the wettest June ever.
Where we live in the East Midlands, we haven't had devastating downpours, just rather more wetness than we might prefer.

This has meant that our suburban garden has been inundated with unwelcome slimy visitors. 

Here is a close-up of a gathering I took 10 days ago. 

I didn't mind them creeping over the leaves of a lanky geranium on the path, but tonight I was so fed up.

Round about 19.00 I picked 15 slugs, some very large ones included, off the foliage of our broad beans.

Last night I found a couple munching their way through the best bean pod! 

Again, taken 10 days ago, this was to have been the lettuce for our lunch.

I had held back on eating any, as I knew that Ian would be home the following day.

It hardly seems worth planting seeds when this is what happens.

However, it is not all gloom and doom here.

Some plants are reviving as others are being cut down.
Both this clematis and the pink jasmine are giving a better showing than ever.
Perhaps they shouldn't be so far away from the path.

Despite the rain, Albertine is flowering well, and although we have removed slugs from the flower spikes, we have one delphinium giving a pretty good show.

We now have this rather odd double rolled-petalled geranium established safely in an out of the way place.

We have many pink geraniums scattered around the garden. 

Periodically we remove pink geraniums if they get in our way, but this flower type first showed up just at the back door step.

I have kept it there, and attempted to encourage it elsewhere.

This year's hardy and weed geranium flower count taken mid June gave 19 different flowers.

The double one is on its side, bottom right.