Summertime.

It's getting really nice, warm, and summery around here! The bees and bumblebees are visiting flowers in bloom, the raspberries are ripening, and the first tomatoes are turning red. It's a delightful time of year... so you're getting some pictures from the current state of things.

First of them all, the flowering hibiscus plant:



Outside, there's lavender and marguerites and carnations:

There's also that green space that cannot be called "lawn" anymore, on account of its lack of grass.



It's mostly a kind of wild creeping thyme these days, interspersed with taller flowers, the occasional stubborn tuft of grass, some moss, and a bare patch here or there. Because of the mass of thyme last year, together with the extreme crunchiness of most plants on the "lawn", we tried out what would happen if there was no mowing of the plants. The result was more thyme (and of course more time, too), and an astonishing plus of insects in the green space. Lots and lots of grasshoppers and cicadas, way more than before. Plus more flowering thyme, and other flowers as well.

Which means we decided to do just the same this year again, with similar results: A lush, beautiful covering of the ground with green thyme (much more dry-resistant than grass, by the way), lots of flowers feeding lots of insects which are supporting more birds in their turn. Last year there was one pass with the lawn-mower in the autumn, to clean things up a little bit, and probably we'll do the same this year. Not mowing also means that there is more space for more pretty wild flowers... so yay for a tiny bit of wilderness in the middle of civilisation!