Monday morning walk (heron, dragonflies, butterflies, bees and bright colours - Coombe Wood of course!)

I seem to be permanently trying to catch up with myself at the moment! On Monday morning I had a very enjoyable walk in warm sunshine (we have had rather a lot of rain lately - I really appreciated both the warmth and the sunshine).

The flower beds near the entrance are spilling over with variety and colour.

An acrobatic bee.

A feather caught on a couple of fuchsias.

 Fabulous ferns

Drifts of colour - some intermingling at the edges, others more contained in sections like a floral patchwork. 

Looking at the details. 

The golden rain tree flowers have almost all finished - lantern like seed pods will form soon.

Happy bee. 

More of these opening their shaggy mop-like flowers

Red grass flowers dangling. 

Red "trees" in front of a "field of rape seed flowers"?

Hover fly coming in to land. 

Gorgeous pink group with almost luminous yellow and light green centres.

More happy bees - no need to share, there's one flower each!

Oh what's this? A small tree towards the back of the herbaceous border has lantern like pods on it. It's a young golden rain tree with its pods forming earlier than the pods on the older tree further round.

I love these starry Cosmos centres. If you've read my blog before you might be getting fed up with me saying this but they are so neat! Long brown cylinders with yellow starry tips emerging from star shaped containers - starting from the outside of the circle and working in to the middle - all those stars in the middle waiting to burst out.

 Cosmos flowers - such a range of colours!

Woops another middle has slipped in! 

Tiny flowers and seed pods. 

Agapanthus opening. 

Salvia hot lips - tiny pops of bright red and white. 

Masses of healthy looking lily of the valley plants next to the fence - flowers long gone.

I forgot to get a close up of these - maybe next time if there are any left.

A jumble of colour. 

Pale sunflowers. 

A butterfly with tattered wings - it had no trouble flying though. 

Light through big leaves. I'm not sure if the "flowers" are anything to do with the leaves - they seemed to be coming from a smaller plant further forwards.

Frilly skirts of double fuchsias. 

Hops - and yet again I missed the development of the hop "flowers". Last time I looked I'm sure it was all a mass of leaves.

It was definitely a butterfly day - so many flitting around, some circling in pairs but not many settling down to have their photographs taken. This pretty little one obliged.

No idea what these are - they look like clusters of popcorn dangling down.

Gorgeous combination of fluffy little lilac flowers, interspersed with purple and magenta and occasional tiny sprays of white flowers dotted among them.

Big and bright flower and a bee with wings that glitter. 

I spent ages by the pond - first of all trying to photograph little fish. I was busy taking photos of the young ones at the top when I noticed the tiny ones which looked about the size of tadpoles.

The edge of the pond was teeming with tiny ones basking in the sunlight.

Then I saw the dragonflies - huge ones zooming across the pond like little helecopters. I didn't manage to get any decent photos - there's a blur at the lower edge of the lily leaves.

and another blur on this photo - sunlight catching on the fast moving wings.

You can just see the body here in the middle of the photo - wings moving so rapidly they can't be seen!

One last dragonfly blur photo! 

I was just taking a last photo of the pond intending to leave when . . .  

. . . a heron soared between the trees and landed on the rock.

It ruffled its feathers . . . 

and poised. 

Then it decided to step down to the waters edge.

and waded in slowly, body gliding forward on long high stepping legs

Yes I got completely carried away taking photos! 

and then all of a sudden it was opening its huge wings and it soared off again.

And I missed its dramatic flight! 

Last couple of photos - wonderful reflections in the clear water. 

Thank you very much for joining me.