Ann Mackay: Inspired by Nature

Out for the Big Butterfly Count

August 8, 2021August 7, 2021 Ann Mackay29 Comments

Recently I wrote that there had been few butterflies in the garden this summer. And I had seen no Peacock butterflies. Happily, some have now appeared, as you can see from the top picture (where it shares the buddleia flower with a Red Admiral.)

There aren’t as many butterflies as in last year’s really warm summer, but it’s great to see some. A little bit of sunshine and the scent of the buddleias has brought them into the garden to feast and sun themselves – conveniently for the ‘Big Butterfly Count’, which finishes this weekend.

The appearance of this Small Tortoiseshell butterfly was well-timed for my second go at the butterfly count. It’s the only one I’ve seen so far this year. In fact, I’ve only seen it a few times in the garden. I was delighted that I had my camera ready, and even happier that it didn’t fly away. (Most of the pictures here have been cropped from much bigger images because I couldn’t get close without disturbing the butterfly.)

Below is a butterfly that I’ve not noticed in the garden before. It’s a Gatekeeper and there were two of them, often in the same area. (The dark, band-like markings on the forewings of this one show that it’s a male.) These are common in hedgerows, grassland and around the edges of wooded areas, so they may have come from the woodlands across the road from us. There are plenty of trees and shrubs in the gardens around here and wilder areas with long grass too, so there could soon be more of them.

After I had photographed the Gatekeeper, I thought to myself that it would be good if I could find a Comma to photograph too. They are common butterflies and sure enough, a couple of them turned up. In fact the first one surprised me by landing on the grass at my feet and then deciding to perch on my leg for a while. So I got a rather dodgy photograph of that one and then managed to get a better photograph of the Comma below.

The butterfly that we see most often here is the Red Admiral. There’s usually several of these around on a sunny day and they’re pretty reliable when it comes to being around for the Big Butterfly Count. Afterwards they entertained me by chasing each other around the garden. It was amazing to see them spinning wildly through the air in the last of the evening sunshine.

While I was taking part in the butterfly count, I noticed that many of the butterflies came to feed on the buddleia plant that you see in the photographs here. This was good, because I hadn’t seen many on it before and I wondered if they preferred the paler purple varieties. This one is ‘Royal Red’. Here it looks more of a reddish purple but the colour changes a lot with the light and sometimes it’s a really lovely deep colour with more red in it. I’m glad to see that it does attract butterflies. I have several cuttings of it that are growing well, so I’ll plant them out in a sunny and sheltered area. Maybe they’ll bring in more butterflies for next year’s count.

There was a surprise while doing my first butterfly count for this year – a big hedgehog snoozing in the undergrowth! I haven’t seen one in this garden for a few years, so it’s good to know that they are around. It was worth having to restart that count just for the glimpse of him or her. (And don’t tell my cats, but I left out a bit of their food, which it ate pretty quickly.)

Red Admiral butterfly — Red Admiral on Buddleja davidii ‘Royal Red’

Not as Expected: Variations

August 1, 2021July 31, 2021 Ann Mackay13 Comments

Sometimes the flowers you plant come up a bit different from the image on the seed packet. That’s the case with this Cosmos ‘Candy Stripe’. Most of the seed companies advertise this plant with images of white flowers with a rich raspberry-coloured stripe all the way round the edge of each petal.

One or two of the companies, though, show you what will actually grow – flowers with a very varied mix of colourations. Some will be almost pure white with just a few traces of pink here and there along the petal edges (as in my photo above). Others may have petals that are partly edged in pink (below). Or the flowers may be mostly blushed with a soft pink but with a darker pink around the outside of the petal.

For me, this is part of the appeal of growing plants like these. Every year I try to grow one or two annuals to give me something new to photograph. So when the result is a little unpredictable, and as beautifully varied as these cosmos flowers, it becomes far more interesting. Having all the different colourations gives me more to photograph and makes it fun to see what new flowers each day brings. I had hoped to photograph one of the flowers with the full markings on the petals, but left it too late. When I went back out to photograph it, the wind had stripped all but two petals off the flower I wanted. (The weather is a bit rough at the moment!)

Happily for me, I can see that there are some darker flowers opening so I’ll soon be able to take some quite different photographs. That’s the joy of growing a flower that is variable and has the capacity to both surprise and delight. (I just hope the wild winds and rain aren’t too unkind to them!)

Little Visitors

July 25, 2021 Ann Mackay17 Comments

After the bees got all the attention last week, I thought I’d pay some to a few of our other garden visitors. I find a lot more wildlife in the garden here than in our previous garden, so there’s often something new or unfamiliar.

The metallic-looking little beetle in the top photo is a first for me. I’d never seen one before but I have read about them. This is a rosemary beetle (Chrysolina americana) and actually an unwelcome intruder because it feeds on various aromatic plants. (These include rosemary, lavender, sage and thyme, all of which grow in our garden.) Luckily I’ve only seen the one so far, so I hope it hasn’t brought its friends! Apparently the damage they do may not harm the plants much, and the beetles themselves can just be picked off the plants.

I never use chemicals in the garden and prefer to hope that predators will naturally get rid of pests. In the case of rosemary beetles, their larva are eaten by birds, frogs and other beetles. So it’s good to have plenty of hungry carnivorous beasties around!

Greenfly tend to suddenly appear in large numbers every summer but luckily the ladybirds do too. A few weeks ago I found the weird-looking larvae of ladybirds in amongst a swarm of greenfly – I hope they had good appetites! There are lots of ladybirds around this year so I think they must have had a an easy winter. (I tend to see them grouped in curled up leaves that have fallen in autumn. Our garden is never too tidy, so there are plenty of places for them to hibernate.)

Another visitor that comes here in large numbers is the hoverfly. (Pictured above.) There are always a lot of these tiny pollinators around the garden – many more than there are bees. I like to watch these little brightly-coloured flies as they zoom around amongst the flower heads. And I find they will often be very obliging and sit still for long enough for me to focus on them when I’m out with my camera. Wish the bees would do that too!

The visitors that we’re missing this year are butterflies. There have been a few Red Admirals and some Large Whites but not much else. Last year there were often Peacock butterflies (below) sunning themselves on our brick path – sometimes as many as a dozen along the length of it. This year I have seen none so far. The low numbers are probably due to all the cold and rain we’ve had this year, so perhaps things will improve as the weather does. The ‘Big Butterfly Count’ survey is being held in the UK at the moment. Let’s hope that the results of that are a bit more encouraging!

Bees’ Needs Week 2021

July 18, 2021July 7, 2022 Ann Mackay22 Comments

The summer feels like it’s going by too quickly. (As always!) Already the flowers that I associate with late summer are starting to make an appearance. I’ve noticed the first pale pink flowers to open on my patch of Japanese anemones, and the echinacea plants (above) are now beginning to display their brightly-coloured daisies.

There are lots of flowers in the garden at the moment so there are also plenty of bees and hoverflies around. That’s very appropriate because this week has been the annual ‘Bees’ Needs Week’ in the UK. This is a campaign to encourage us to grow suitable plants for bees and pollinators and to allow areas in our gardens to be wild enough to create a habitat for them.

Bee on Cephelaria gigantea (giant scabious)

Interest in helping bees (and wildlife in general) has grown greatly in recent years, with many gardeners delighted to provide spaces for nature. Now local councils and other bodies are taking a more sympathetic stance too. They have been allowing areas of grass to remain uncut for longer and even encouraging wild patches and mini meadows in previously manicured areas.

It’s good to see the bees back again here after a couple of weeks that have been unusually wet and much cooler than normal. Certain flowers are particularly successful at attracting bees. Here it’s the various members of the scabious family that seem to always have bees and hoverflies around them.

The pale yellow flowers of the giant scabious (Cephalaria gigantea, above) are a recent addition to the garden and have proved very popular. Their impressive height makes it a little difficult for me to photograph the bees on them though! (They can get up to 8 ft. tall, but mine have still some way to go.) Scabiosa atropurpurea (below, right) is up to about 3 ft. tall, so much easier to photograph!

L: Honeybee on geranium, R: Bumblebee on scabious flower

The blue geranium pictured on the left (‘Mrs. Kendall Clark’) has finished flowering but geranium ‘Rozanne’ is ready to take over its role. However, although the bees enjoy it, there weren’t any on its flowers when I took my photographs.

I think the bees weren’t interested in the flowers of Rozanne because the lavender beside it was in full flower and more alluring. I watched lots of these buff-tailed bumblebees (below) buzzing from flower to flower, clearly intent on making the most of the nectar in the tiny flowers before they all go over. (Bumblebees have longer tongues than honeybees, which makes it easier and quicker for them to access the nectar in lavender than it is for honeybees. This means they tend to move around the flowers quite fast – so harder work for the photographer!)

Given how much the bees enjoy the lavender, I’ll plant more of it for next summer. (Angustifolia varieties are reckoned to be particularly good.) I’m very happy to be able to provide something for the bees here. It seems only fair when I enjoy going on a ‘bee-hunt’ with my camera – and of course, we need our bees!

Something Sweet: Scabiosa columbaria ‘Flutter Rose Pink’

July 11, 2021July 10, 2021 Ann Mackay16 Comments

As you can imagine, I haven’t bought many plants during the pandemic. Recently we have ventured out to a few of our favourite nurseries and we have treated ourselves to one or two new plants.

This pretty scabious is one of the plants that appealed to me most. It’s an undeniably feminine looking flower, with all those frilly petals in a sweet shade of pink. I’m sure it will add something special to a border that has lots of smaller, simpler flowers.

Reading about it tells me that I can expect flowers for a long time over the year – right through from spring into autumn. (I’d noticed this long flowering period from the other plants from the scabious family already in the garden.)

‘Flutter Rose Pink’ should be happy here because it likes sun and good drainage. (It’s said to be drought-tolerant, which makes it very suitable for our East-Anglian climate.) The other scabious relatives in the garden include a smaller Scabiosa columbaria in a pale blue, the tall yellow Cephalaria gigantea, Knautia macedonica in reds and pinks and a very dark red Scabiosa atropurpurea. All of them do well here and generously seed themselves around the garden. I’m hoping the new scabious will do the same!

My new plant is a treat for me but will be one for the pollinators here too. I’ve found that the various scabious are extremely popular with bees, hoverflies and butterflies. Because they keep flowering until late in the year, they are a reliable food source for these insects. ( That’s especially true of the knautia, which can produce flowers right up to the start of winter. It’s great for frosted-flower photos and feeds the latest of bees.)

Now I just have to decide where to plant my new scabious…

Colour Change: Nigella

July 4, 2021July 3, 2021 Ann Mackay23 Comments

Since my post about colour-changing spring peas, I’ve been looking out for more flowers that change colour. There’s been one practically right in front of me but I hadn’t noticed it until now.

Nigella damascena (probably ‘Miss Jekyll’) has been seeding itself around our garden for a few years. It becomes covered in lots of soft blue flowers and some that are white with blue veins. I’d always liked the pale-coloured buds best as a subject to photograph because of the extra detail of the delicate blue veins on the bluish-white petals.

Nigella damascena bud about to open. — This light-coloured bud of a nigella flower is just about to open.

Despite photographing them fairly frequently, I hadn’t realised that these pale flowers were the immature colouration. I had thought that they were a variation and that the flowers just came in a mix of blues on each plant. However, I’ve just read online comments by other gardeners who say the lighter coloured flowers gradually darken to give the beautiful sky-blue of the mature flower.

I don’t know why I didn’t notice this before. Even now I’m wondering if it is really true. I’ve just been out in the garden to look at the plants and all the buds I could see were light-coloured. There were no darker blue buds. So it seems that all the flowers do indeed start off as a white slightly flushed with a pale blue and with the blue and green veins as shown above.

Most of the mature flowers were blue but I could see one or two that were still pale. Maybe they will darken to the same blue as the rest if given time. Or will they? It will be difficult to tell because the seed pods develop quickly, so the whole plant is always changing. Perhaps some flowers simply don’t mature as fully as others before their petals drop. Trying to find the answer will give me a very good reason to look at these pretty flowers more often!

Blue Nigella damascena flower — This nigella flower has matured to a lovely blue.

Under Attack!

June 27, 2021June 26, 2021 Ann Mackay19 Comments

Normally I don’t have many problems with slugs and snails in the garden, probably because we have a low rainfall here. But when they do appear, it seems that they’re keen to snack on the flowers that I most want to photograph.

Some flowers seem to be particularly tempting to the hungry critters. For a few years we had a lovely pale blue clematis (Perle d’Azur) in a large wooden tub. Well, it should have been lovely, and sometimes it was, but just for a little while. Sooner or later the slugs and snails would find it and reduce the flowers to lacework.

Irises are another flower that tend to get a bit chewed. Sometimes, as with the top photograph, I have to avoid having damaged parts of the petals show. With this one (Iris sibirica ‘Silver Edge’), I had to find a low angle that hid a prominent hole in one petal and then crop to remove extensive damage on another petal.

The occasional damaged petal is one thing, but sometimes the damage is much worse. While living in Scotland (more slugs and snails there!) I decided to grow an assortment of sunflowers to photograph. So I was dismayed to discover that all my seedlings had their stems chewed right through at the base. No sunflowers for me!

I’ve had similar damage to the irises too. I was glad to be able to photograph the iris below because the year before I was denied that chance. The buds on the iris’s first and single flower stem were almost ready to open and looked really promising with their soft shades of caramel and pink. Excitedly, I visited in the morning to see if the top flower had opened and was ready for me to photograph it. Imagine my disappointment when I discovered the flower stem lying on the ground, looking sad and wilted, with its stem chewed the whole way through. I could have cried!

Since then, I have discovered that it helps to surround vulnerable plants with a circle of either gritty sand or wood ash from our woodburner. But sometimes only careful cropping or the use of digital heal and clone tools can save a photograph.

Gone Blue: Colour-Changing Flowers

June 20, 2021June 19, 2021 Ann Mackay20 Comments

Last month I photographed these tiny spring pea (Lathyrus vernus) flowers. After I had finished photographing them I noticed that they were still changing colour after they had been picked.

The flowers had started off as a purple-pink but were changing to blue as they aged. I wondered if they would turn entirely blue and I found, after a couple of days, that almost all of them had. (As you can see, there is one flower that has stubbornly managed to remain pink in the top photograph. However, I reckon it would have turned blue too if it had been able to last long enough.)

Having flowers that change colour is a bonus for a photographer, allowing a whole new set of photographs to be made of the same subject. It’s also fascinating to watch as this happens.

Apparently the reasons for this kind of colour change are practical. It lets pollinating insects know that the individual flower has already been pollinated and will now have little pollen or nectar left to offer them. This helps the plant by directing the attention of pollinators to those other flowers that are still waiting to be pollinated.

Colour change happens in other plants too. The one that I’m most aware of at the moment is Salvia ‘Hot Lips’. That’s because I bought what I thought was an un-labelled sage with a good bright red flower which would be ideal for an area of planting with hot colours. (I already had the magenta-flowered Salvia microphylla, which flowers really well here. This looked like a red version of it.)

I was a bit surprised later on, when the new flowers on the plant began opening in the well-known red and white bicolours of Hot Lips. From what I’ve read, the flowers on this plant can be red, bicoloured, or white, depending on temperature or growing conditions. So it’s an interesting plant to watch but not so useful if you have a particular colour scheme in mind!

Colour change isn’t something I’ve been much aware of in the past. But now it has me intrigued and I can see that it may give me good photographic opportunities too. So I’ll be keeping an eye open for other plants that do this…there’s always something interesting happening in gardens!

You can see my post with the spring peas still in their original pinks and purples here.

Crumpled Tissue Flowers: Cistus

June 13, 2021 Ann Mackay25 Comments

The rock rose here (Cistus x purpureus) has been at it’s best this week. In the warm afternoon sunshine, the shrub has been absolutely covered in these crinkly pink flowers.

Now, however, those first flowers have gone over – shattered into lots of pink papery shreds lying on the ground. But I can see that there are plenty more flowers yet to appear, as there are lots of fat little buds waiting for their time to burst open.

These flowers are tightly packed inside their buds and emerge looking like scraps of crumpled tissue paper. They each last only a day and on a sunny day, there can be many flowers open at once. When I took these photographs, the rock rose had dozens of bright flowers, but early this evening when I looked at it, there wasn’t a flower left. Tomorrow morning I shall go out and see how many of the new flowers have opened in the sun. (In the UK, these shrubs are also known as ‘sun roses’.)

However ephemeral the flowers may be, the shrub itself has survived here for a long time. (Earlier white-flowered rock roses haven’t done so well and died in very cold winters.) It was planted not long after we arrived here, as part of a gravel garden.

Plans for this area have changed though, and it will become a mixture of veggie garden and somewhere to grow some wildflowers and other plants for bees. Our greenhouse will also have to be moved to this area, so I may have to cut the sprawling rock rose back a bit. Rock roses don’t like to be heavily pruned but I may be able to get away with taking off one or two of the longer branches. As insurance, I’ll try taking some cuttings from it too. If they root successfully, I’ll have some new rock roses to plant out in another sunny area. If I’m really lucky, they might even survive as long as this one has.

A Slow Start and Gradual Change

June 6, 2021June 5, 2021 Ann Mackay25 Comments

The cold weather in May has slowed down the development and flowering of our garden for June. Normally there would be plenty of flowers here, including these alliums (Allium christophii) that I photographed last year.

There aren’t even as many of the alliums as there were in the few years before. Last year there were a good number of them in the bed where the picture below was taken. This year there are only a few in the same place.

I know that other gardeners find that Allium christophii doesn’t always come back but I don’t know why…is it because the bulbs became diseased, were in soil that was too poor, or had they just reached the end of their lifespan? (The plants had a sunny and well-drained site which seemed to suit them.)

Luckily I have another patch of Allium christophii which has done much better. This is an older area that I had planted as a gravel garden and here the plants have multiplied over the years. Ironically, the way the alliums had spread in this area made me worry that they would take over the other, newer border too. (And that’s still possible because there are plenty of allium seedlings in both areas.)

The unpredictability of gardening and the way things change from year to year is one of the things that keeps it interesting for me. (How boring would it be if the plants always stayed the same year after year!) There are always new things to learn and different ideas to try out. And there are always surprises around the corner!

I’m glad that I do have the older patch of alliums that are doing well because I would hate to be without their little purple stars. The bees love them too, which makes them important for my future plans for the garden. I think I will try to move some of those tiny allium seedlings to another area. Then I can just leave them there to grow and develop into new bulbs. Hopefully, in a few years I’ll be surprised by a whole new batch of these lovely flowers.