June? June?! June! Where has the other half of this year disappeared to?

Still, any alarm about the rapidity of passing time is allayed by a gentle stroll around my garden, which is looking particularly flamboyant right now.

Here’s the edited version:

Why edited? Because, the back garden at the moment is a riot, a veritable riot of rhododendrons and azaleas. Which, I have to confess, aren’t my favourite plant. I counted nearly 20 plants out there. And, just to remind you, we’re talking 20 plants in a long thin London back garden, which means they’re taking up the majority of flower bed space.

Most of them are orange, red and pink, which again I have to confess, are not my favourite colours in the garden.

A shrub re-arrangement is a definite job for next year.

So, just two for this moodboard: a delicate white one which looks almost honeysuckle-like and this rather amazing white and pink-edged beauty. The bud, still all curled up, looks like a glorious sweet, I think.

Though I normally prefer whites and blues, I absolutely adore the bright yellow poppies, which have been popping up all over the garden for about six weeks now. I tried to cut a few and bring them inside, but they wilt and go hard within a matter of hours…

And, apart from the clematis, that is the last of these plants that I’m actually able to identify, so if anyone can enlighten me about the others, I’d be delighted.

These white flowers are just delightful and I’ve got lots and lots, dotted all over the place. They open up really wide and look like little stars popping up in the beds.

I wasn’t sure, at first, if this little purple flower was a weed (and perhaps it still is) but then it opened up all these lovely delicate little flowers and I’m enjoying it immensely. The poor thing is suffering badly from both of my two main armies of garden pests. Its leaves have been almost entirely destroyed by slugs and there are quite a few greenfly sitting on its stalk (still some in the photo, I notice, though I had tried to brush them all off…)

As I mentioned before, the slugs are having an absolute riot in my garden. I’ve tried removing them by hand and setting beer traps, but it’s just a drop in the ocean for their numbers. I did even cut one in half with a pair of secateurs, following the advice of someone in my horticulture class, but good god, was it a violent and terrifying end. I couldn’t bring myself to do that again.

I’m less bothered by the greenfly and have this (hugely optimistic) hope that if I leave them there, it will just encourage swarms of ladybirds to make themselves at home as well. We’ll see…

This little beauty seems to be about the only plant unbothered by all the slugs. I want to say its a geranium, but I’ve no idea why. The very serrated leaves in the background of the photo belong to it and it’s created a nice little mound with these lovely flowers only just appearing on top recently.

These have a similar habitat at the back of the garden and I think they might be some type of alpine flower. There are great mounds of them spilling out over the brick-edges flower beds. Lovely.

Finally, a little trip to the front garden again. I couldn’t possibly bring myself to cut this down and take it inside, but this little stunner is a Sicilian honey garlic (or Nectaroscordum siculum if you want to get all Latin…) I planted the bulbs last Autumn, when I removed the giant cactus.

I’ve got six tall spikes sticking up with these absolutely incredible flowers drooping down from the top. I adore them.

Finally, I haven’t been posting quite as frequently recently as my mock exams for my horticulture course are on Wednesday. So, instead of writing blog posts, I’ve been desperately learning four Latin names of plants that can be propagated by soft tip cuttings, trying to remember what happens in the mitochondria of a plant cell and reading about the constituent parts of soil. Normal service to be resumed shortly…