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I have so many bees this year. Their favourite plants appear to be green alkanet (pictured below with a bee), ceanothus, foxglove (pictured below) and campanula (pictured left).

I have finally gotten a photo of a chinese lantern flower that's in focus. It's been very difficult I think because there's so little contrast but I'm not sure. They aren't very noticeable flowers and the plants look like a weed but wait until those orange "lantern"s appear and it's a fantastic display.

These snapdragons have proved to be great plants. I grew them from seed and they are back the next year - something so many plants bought from the garden centre don't do.

The yellow ones are amongst the green alkanet which as usual is popular with the bees. I have it all over the garden but hate to thin it while the bees are loving it.

It's hard to capture but the bees are going mad for the ceanothus. I've never noticed before just how much.

I still have some lupins left! The slugs have eaten quite a few but I have liberally sprinkled slug pellets. If I didn't I wouldn't have certain plants. I've grown lupins from seed 2 or 3 times before but only a few survived. I don't think any of those few survived from last year. I guess if the slugs didn't get them the cold did.

I've just been reading Bunny Guiness' article about weeds in the Daily Telegraph. I certainly agree with her that it is well-worth pulling out weeds before they flower and set seed as that seed causes so many more weeds to sprout in the future that can be eradicated before they even begin. This practice is so much more effective if you don't have close neighbours like one of mine whose garden (pictured below) is completely overgrown with weeds. I have weed seeds blowing over from them no matter what I do. Luckily it isn't directly next door, although close enough. I took this pic from my front garden.

Still adding to my Weed Identification Guide. Everything is going a bit mad in the garden with this warm weather at last, including the weeds.

These white snapdragons are easy to identify but I have these other seedlings with a red edging around the leaves (below) which I think are darker coloured snapdragons but I'm not absolutely certain. I will have to wait until they bloom to see for sure.

end of June

The photo above was taken in May. I just took another photo of this plant today which is shown below. It definitely is a snapdragon as I thought.

I love terracotta pots and have bought a few on ebay. Unfortunately over the past few years a number have been broken, mostly due to cold winters when I just left them outside and also squirrels knocking them off shelves and tables. I've researched how to repair them and thought I had found a good solution recently with contact adhesive and even started gluing them with it. I hadn't researched well enough! After more careful reading of the can and web site: 1. it's not waterproof, 2. it's toxic for plants. Back to square one. I have read about swimming pool repair glue which sounds hopeful but have not tried it yet.

Updates to Weed Identification Guide

I've made a few updates to the Weed Identification Guide. If you have any images of weeds in your garden that I don't cover and you'd like to share them with other gardeners, please get in touch (julie at gardenwithoutdoors.org.uk) and I'll post them, thanks!

I just had to add another photo of the muscari. They're looking so good at the moment and the colour is so intense, especially amongst the fresh green.

I was quite surprised to see this tulip in bloom. It's still so cold I didn't expect tulip flowers yet and so many of my tulips planted in previous years haven't survived. I didn't even realise I had a tulip there.

Things are finally happening in the garden withoutdoors after this cold cold weather.

I actually have a few pots of flowers to put on these shelves. The idea was to have some on each level but things have been a bit slow in the garden.