first Amazing Grey poppy in bloom

I shouldn't be so surprised but I am when the seeds I sow eventually flower. It seems so hit and miss so much of the time.

Scarecrow likes to sit on this wall,

either dozing

or looking for mice in the neighbour's garden

Crepis rubra

before these flowers bloomed I'd forgotten I'd sown these seeds so I planted more so now I have another pot

hosta with buds, surprised still some existing are some were eaten by slugs and snails

this pot is full of poppies, I guess they grew to fit their space - the Lauren's Grape poppies are smaller than the ones in a larger pot

I'm still waiting for these poppies to bloom and I'm not sure which they are

I look after my neighbour's garden next door. It used to have lots of hollyhocks but then they got infected with hollyhock weevil. Then the ox-eye daisies took over the garden blocking out any struggling hollyhocks. I decided to try to revive the hollyhocks. I bought bare root plants, I think it was 10 but only got 9 surviving. I potted them up and they've grown well in tall pots. I also grew some from seed with 10 plants resulting. Time to plant out so I cleared the ox-eye daisies but the ground is rock hard. It rained last night but the ground is still rock hard. I worked hard today trying to get them in the ground and was gifted some home-made compost which I used to give them a little something to make them happier. I planted out 14 so have 5 more to do tomorrow. I'm thinking of putting some garden waste on the rock hard flower bed for a little while to soften it up, a couple weeks? I'm not sure if that method would help. 

salvia sclarea var turkestanica, one plant surviving after having about 3 last year

sunflowers in bud

self-seeded viper's-bugloss - so difficult to grow from seed

my best poppies this year were the Lauren's Grape that self-seeded

I have one sea holly surviving from last year flowering.

and one very very slug-damaged sea holly which does not have a flowering stem

marsh mallow in bud, behind the acanthus

I love green alkanet and have masses of it in my garden. In the spring it blooms, the bees love it and it provides colour in the garden before other plants get going. It dies back in time for other plants to take over. Below is an example of one of them wilted plants. They all die back like this.

Atlantic poppy rosette and one with a bud

a green alkanet looking very rosette-like, they don't usually, green alkanet is not a plant that tends to start with a rosette

evening primrose seedling I discovered behind some other pots, didn't know I had it, presume it self-seeded from plants I had last year

I'm not sure what this is, it self-seeded, not sure from where

wall lettuce I saw locally, surprised it survived Veolia