Flowering.

This year, I'm quite happy with the successive flowering of plants in our garden - there's been no gap yet, with something attractive to the bees always in bloom. At the moment, it's the lavendar that takes prime position, though it's not the only thing getting attention. 

There's still a number of plants I'd like to have in the garden, or have more of, but I have sort of accepted that this takes time. There used to be foxgloves and calendula, but they have disappeared, and I'd love to have them back. Probably that means some seed buying, or some seed stealing, at some point in the near future. And then maybe it will work this time around, maybe not - eventually there will be plants that thrive with the soil and amount of attention they will be getting here, and then it will be fine. 

Meanwhile the little lemon tree has decided to make more leaves again. I'm very happy about that, as it had been flagging for quite a while, even though I had tried to get it enough (special citrus plant) fertiliser, and have it watered correctly (it did not like getting too dry at all, and actually wants much more water more frequently than the instructions everywhere had led me to believe). But even though it's supposed to like hard water, it did not do too well with it (so now I use rain water), and the special fertiliser also didn't cut the mustard. The leaves it made were relatively few, and they were more yellow than green.

I finally figured out that it lacked both iron and magnesium, so I provided both - what a good thing that we had an iron oxide (for making iron gall ink) and chalk (for bouldering) that are the two key ingredients in iron and magnesium fertilisers. I had to guess for the amounts, and delivered some more magnesium a few days ago, but at least the iron has arrived, as the new leaves are a nice dark red (as they should be, or so the Internet tells me). 

Regardless of its plights, and the fact that it does not look very pretty (rather irregular and not decoratively tree-ish), it has taken its job of making lemons quite seriously, and we've been able to have home-grown lemon for quite a while now. It is also getting ready to try and make some more, as you can see on the image!

So... any plants or flowers you would not want to miss in your garden, or urban green space like your balcony?