There’s no shortage of colourful flowers in the garden just now.  I got a bit carried away dividing asters a couple of years ago so now autumn brings a haze of tall, swaying stems covered with pale lilac daisies, all along the length of the orchard fence.  I don’t know the name of the variety as my original piece came from a friend’s throw outs.  There are some clumps of shorter, more richly coloured, named asters along the border too as well as masses of golden rudbeckias and white cosmos.  All these daisies should be a magnet for bees and butterflies but the nectar-feeding insects are all busy elsewhere.

 

 

The ivy flowers don’t look much but they must have something the more colourful flowers can’t offer.  The ivy along the low wall above our back yard makes a green, flowering hedge where yesterday three Red Admiral butterflies were feeding, alongside one Comma and dozens of bees, wasps and hoverflies.