Regular readers will have woken up to the fact a long time ago that I get a lot of pleasure from my garden. A garden will stimulate all the senses everyday, whether it the sound of a bird in song, splashes of colour among the foliage, the heady scent of roses and the Port Wine Magnolia on the evening breeze, the bite of the first tomato warmed by the sun and the feel of warm earth or the softness of a petal.
I planted Buddleias along the side of the house which have grown very quickly and are a constant source of new and amazing things.
Last Summer I was overwhelmed with the many different butterflies, insects and birds they attracted and spent many hours just watching them coming and going collecting nectar from the flowers.
Just when I thought I had seen pretty much every insect that could possibly be attracted to the Buddleia flowers a new one has appeared. It was a very strange creature and quite large as insects go and I immediately had to Google it and see what it was.
So these strange creatures are a Clear wing Hummingbird Moth and if you look closely they do look just like a Hummingbird. Amazing what you find.
Last night it was very noisy out there so I headed out to see what was going on.. It was really hard to see what was buzzing around in the dark so I grabbed my camera living in hope that a photo just might turn out ok.
Lucky for me my camera came through with flying colours and the source of all that buzzing was revealed.
Remember these little bees from last year? They are back into the Lavender again.
I ducked into the Op Shop today and found treasure of another kind, I nearly passed it by because all I could see were the orange flowers in among a lot of linen.
An amazing array of embroidered and lace doileys all folded into the very unattractive cover.
The intention is to get enough to put a quilt top together but I am not sure that I will be able to actually sew them permanently into a quilt when the time comes.
I heard a very ugly bird cry outside a minute ago and was excited to realise that the Dollar Birds were back for the Summer. They have been coming here for many years now but for some reason didn't turn up last year.
More information here if you want to know what they are.
The only other visitor we have had here has been the brown snake I mentioned in my previous post. Unlucky for us it was a female and the outcome of that visit has been lots of baby brown snakes in the yard. They are one baby I do not find very cute at all.