Purple, pink and yellow

So they promised us a long hot summer. Or is that just the cider adverts hoping for the best? This week has been pretty much what we've been used to getting from our British summers; lots of cloud cover, short sunny spells followed by showers and the odd rumble of thunder. In short - pretty much perfect weather for our gardens and the wildlife that lives in them.
Thanks to the weather for providing the essential ingredients that made it possible for the flowers to thrive, without which the bee would not have had such a splendid backdrop to pose against, resulting in the new picture Debbie supplied for my Talk of Bees blog entry. I only had one other bee photo which I'd already used. I flipped and skewed the original picture to give it a new look but it still didn't look much different. I've now retrospectively added the new bee/foxglove picture alongside my little poem, which I'm much more happy with now.
The gardens are looking very good this year, alive with colour and life. The resident gardeners here are always trying to grow new things, experimenting with new seeds and cuttings.
The mice have returned, creeping out of the undergrowth to join the equally mouse-like Dunnock, who can often be seen hopping through the leaves to get to the oats left out for him.