At this time of the year just about the first thing I do in the morning when I get downstairs is go out for a walk around my wee garden to see what has happened overnight.

The first day lily of the year opened up yesterday, this is another flower which is in my herb patch but they don’t take up much room and although each flower only lasts for a day there are so many of them that it doesn’t really matter as there is always another one ready to come out.

Another peony rose with an aquilegia or columbine as Shakespeare called it. They self-seed all over the place and they come up all different colours, so they’re always a nice surprise.

This is a variation of the broom which flowers all over hillsides in Britain at this time of the year. The broom plant or planta genista as it is in Latin was the emblem of the Plantagenets, hence their name.

The Cranesbill geranium is another prolific self-seeder and they’re promiscuous too so they pop up in different variations. When I was a youngster a geranium was a very different plant but for some reason they keep changing plant names and what used to be geraniums are now called pelargoniums.

Can you see the bee in the poppy? The bees just adore them but they move so fast that it’s really difficult to snap them.

As you can see the poppies are spreading out quite a bit now and taking up a lot of room in the herb patch but I’ve tried moving them and they just come back even bigger.

I took this one because I thought it might be of interest to anyone who hasn’t seen how a poppy seed head forms. As you can see, the bees have had their way with this flower and it’s beginning to fall apart. It shows quite well what an exotic and lush texture the flower has. It always amazes me that it grows so well in our cold climate.

The first rose flowered yesterday but it’s a climbing one and I’m going to have to get the ladders out to get close to it. Maybe tomorrow!