This is Pieris formosa, which is a spring flowering ericaceous shrub. It is followed by the red leaves, that turn different colours until they go green. But now to confuse everyone the leaves have gone red again!
It seems like everything is up the creek without a paddle, this year!
Regards.
Neil.

"It seems like everything is up the creek without a paddle, this year"!
Regards.
Neil.

LOL

Dear Tami, this is one I took this morning! It is wild Cyclamen that normally flowers here in the late Autumn/fall and sometimes the winter. If the winter is really bad it may flower in very early spring. It is not even August yet, does it think Santa is coming early this year?

Neil.

I hope it means Santa is coming early this year. That is a beautiful cyclamen.

Dear Tami, I don't as I do not like Christmas. New Year or Hogmanay is my time and first footing!
Someone gave my mother some white and red ones of the Cyclamen and they have now produced pink, and as shown here white and pink ones, They love growing under trees and adore it under a very old and protected paperbark maple Acer griseum. Trouble is they grow everywhere and seed everywhere, so I am forever pulling the corms out for her and giving them away to people. All under my wife's Acer glade they have gone wild, and spread to all parts of my garden where they can grow. We have so many of them and Bluebells it is sometimes hard to find anyone who wants them! As for foxgloves they are a total pest to us, as they get everywhere, nobody wants them as they have the same problem with them as we have. If you get a horseradish plant suddenly growing then you are in trouble. For although we of course use it to make horseradish sauce with, the roots go down so far that you cannot stop them. Dig out as much as you want and they come straight back, and there are thousands of them around here!

Neil.

Some very lovely Disa plants. They are an orchid and grow mostly in South Africa, in the wild.
Regards.
Neil.

I was going to ask What is a Disa? but you answered it for me. I like it.

Neil, Horseradish, blah! My Mom eats horseradish on everything. I think she acquired the taste for it when my Dad was stationed over there in the Air Force way back in 1961.
The Disa is a beautiful plant.

Dear Tami, one could say that about American mustard which is nothing but disgusting to us. Whereas English mustard is hot and compliments Roast beef!
Regards.
Neil.

I'm not that fond of American mustard either.

Talking about things going crazy, plant wise, I went out last evening to photograph the field opposite which has just been harvested and its still JULY harvest home is September! Then I spotted my white Rhododendron - and its already July, this one should flower in March/April. The Hydrangea on the other hand is spot on for timing.
The plant world has gone mad.

Dear Carol, it has gone mad. The Michaelmas daises have already flowered here and have finished, work that one out? I am hoping it is not going to be another cold and long winter.
Especially as the rowans or mountain ash trees are full of ripe berries and it is still July!
I do hope you are well?
Regards.
Neil.

Neil it must be nice to be surrounded by constly changing blooms, it has been so hot here (in the 100sZ) for over a month everything is dying and we are not allowed to water because we have had no rain.

Hi neil,
Yes I am very well thank-you. I have just got back from an open garden, opened for the National Garden Scheme to raise money for Charity. I have been to this one several times previously because it is so lovely, it has a mixture of light woodland partial shade and full sun and changes dramatically with the seasons. There is also an associated plant nursery, run as a self financing hobby, so if you get there early enough you can sometimes buy the plants you see in the garden in pots to take home. This visit was particularly because the owner had propgated an Ajuca Incisa specially for me after our last visit.

My previous visits have been in Spring and Autumn so this is the first time I have seen its summer bounty. I have now bought a Codonopsis, Grey-Wilsonii which is a spectacular blue climber. Its flowers are a very similar colour and shape to meconopsis Baleii which they also have there. I hope it likes my garden as its my favourite plant colour. I also aquired a Salvia Patens - Cambridge Blue and an annual Delphinium which is about to flower and, hopefully provide seed for the years ahead. Silene Elizabethae added itself to the haul as well as you can see in the picture!
The codonopsis leaves are on the lower right,
thats the delphinium leaf behind the flower. ---- The full haul

Dear Carol, we have a lady near us that opens her garden for the National Garden Scheme or yellow book as we call it. Many years ago I gave her a tree fern Dicksonia antarctica, as I grow them. We have been friends ever since, although like all of us she is getting elderly now. I also gave her a Fremontodendron californicum, which is stunning now. When she does have the garden open once a year, you do not get tea and biscuits, you get tea and her famous Madeira cake. She grows cardoons Cynara cardunculus, which as she showed me are very nice to look at, and very nice to eat as well.
Your plants look very nice indeed, and one hopes that they give you lots of pleasure, for they would me, if I had the room for them.
Hope they did not cost you too much.
Regards.
Neil.

I enjoyed both sets of pictures. right now I am enjoying weeds, but won't try & photograph them. I set of iris slide from this year are ready to go to shop.

After the shower tonight I got these two photos in the dark of my tree ferns!
Regards.
Neil.

Shower Neil - you were lucky we had 1.5 inches of rain in around 30 minutes! It was the mother and father of all thunderstorms, thank goodness for my rapidly draining soil. It went from .5 inch of standing water to just looking rather wet in another 30 minutes. If we were on clay we would have floated away.

Tomorrows job is to get all the soil and mulch back of the paths and onto the garden and clean the moss out of the gutters. That all washes off the roof and has probably blocked everything.

Funny? story; I arrived back home just as the heavens opened, sat in the car for five minutes but then thought I would just dash to the door and in. Got to the door - DH had locked it and left the key in on the inside so I couldn't get in. Power was out so the bell didn't work so I started hammering on the door - we have a brass knocker so its loud. 3 minutes later, by which time I'm drowned, DH opens the door. he is on the phone telling daughter about the storm. Apparantly he said " listen to the rain hammering down - it could almost be someone banging on the door."
Daughter replied "Dad it IS someone knocking on your door I can hear it from here"
He then said " no its just the rain but I'll open the door and prove it if you insist" !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And he tells me he isn't going deaf!! I was wet through to the skin and even my undergarments made puddles on the floor when i took them off - Like Queen Victoria I was NOT amused . Daughter rang back to see if I was OK rather later and she was still laughing!

Next time I go out and leave him home I'm going to confiscate his keys!!

I would too. You go girl..................

Good idea!