More food for the pollinators

The bees, butterflies and hummingbirds have been sipping at the nectar of the Sapphire Blue salvia plants for the past few weeks. Some of those spires are starting to dry up, so it's a relief to see a third Sapphire Blue salvia plant starting to produce blossoms.

Above is one of the Indigo Spire flower heads, soon to open.

And to its lower right are the buds of the the Naked Buckwheat plant, at the tips of two narrow stalks.

It's the first summer that we'll have buckwheat blooming in the garden, and I can't wait to see what color the flowers will be.

It's great to see the cape honeysuckle blossoming again.

Those bright reddish orange flowers are a treat for Anna's hummingbirds, who go for the nectar.

But at the same time the finches love to eat the entire flowers, so we'll see how long those flowers last.

Meanwhile, in the front garden, a nice surprise - borage sprouting up in the mulch that covers the area around the tree lavatera that we had to severely prune and cut to stumps because of rust virus.

Some years ago, before the lavatera grew to a huge tree, this area was a field of borage in the spring and summer. The bees love both the borage and lavatera blossoms, so what to do? Maybe we'll try to keep the lavatera from growing too huge again, so that the borage will get enough sunlight and thrive here.