Just a few days and it is officially summer here in the Netherlands, but when looking at the weather summer has already started.
It hasn rained for weeks and it has been warm and sunny for two weeks in a row.
I can see the effects of this in the garden. There are a lot of flowers and those flowers attract a lot of insects.
In spring I've planted several plants and seeds in my backyard to make it more colourful and attractive for insects. Insects and especially bees really could use somehelp since their numbers decline year after year. This has to do with the changing climate and the use of insecticides, but also because a lot of people pave their backyards completely.
So I have reserved space for some nice wild flowers that the insects like.
And it also has an additional benefit; I can create some nice photographs from both.
I have quite a large snowberry bush which has a lot of tiny pink flowers at the moment.
Bees are flying on and off to collect nectar from these flowers.
Since the bees only stay on the flower for a fraction of a second it's really hard to capture them on film. The bush also has a lot of leaves, so I don't always have a clear sight either as shown in the photograph below.
Another insect-magnet is this Coincya monensis. I assume yellow is the colour that attracts the most insects since a lot of flowers are yellow and they are full of insects.
Here is a shot of a hoverfly on one of the flowers. It was gathering some nectar from the flowers. There are hundreds of different species of hoverflies. People often think they are bees or wasps, but it are different species.
Here is another hoverfly resting on a leaf in the shade.
And then there are the bumblebees; my furry friends. I've captured quite some shots of them on the Coincya monensis.
They are sitting on the flowers or hanging upside down to collect the nectar with their long tongues.
Our blueberry bush is also doing well. The berries are still green, but there are quite a lot of them. They need a couple more weeks of sunshine before they can be harvested.
This little flower is the Serbian bellflower. I haven't planted this one myself, but it shows up in some parts of the garden.
On one of the flowers from the wild flower mix I spotted a larvae of a ladybug. It looks a bit shriveled but I think it is in it's transformation phase now.
I've bought a few Oxeye plants a few years ago. We had spotted these once in the garden of a holiday home and they were loaded with butterflies. This is why I bought a few of them myself.
They did quite well last year and some of the buds are almost opening up already. Almost ready to lure the butterflies into my garden.
This cute flower also was in the wild flower seed mix. It's scorpionweed (I had to look that up with my Obsidentify app; I can really recommend this great app!).
And finally I'm sharing a close up of one of my roses. The bush is full of these nice pink roses and smells really nice.
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Creating blogs about photography, cycling, gardening, craft beer and more...
Every week I create a post with an overview of all the photography contests on Hive. You can find the weekly overview post by checking the #photocontests tag.
I also organise a weekly photography contest myself; the POB Photocontest. This weekly contests has a new subject every week and you can win POB tokens and Ecency points.
Check out the posts with the #pobphotocontest tag.
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