This week’s favourite flowers

On a day when the North wind is blowing across the garden what a treat to find some treasured plants flowering.      Iris Langport Wren has a beautiful deep purple flower and  is fairly low growing so I’m confident the flower stalks won’t get destroyed in the gusty wind,  however whether they will survive two Springer Spaniels rushing around is another matter!  Planted against the house wall is the yellow flowered Weigela middendorffiana.   It’s planted on the North side of the house in a sheltered corner up against the chimney and seems to relish this spot. The flowers are yellow  with an orange throat, very similar to a foxglove,  bees love this plant.  Paeonia mlokosewitschii or as most people refer to it, “Molly the Witch”, is a real favourite.   I bought this maybe fifteen years ago as a very small pathetic specimen in a garden centre end of year sale. It needed rescuing and has certainly grown since then.  However I probably haven’t treated it that well as it has moved house with us once and this is its second position here, I will leave it alone now and hope that one day it expands and manages more than one flower a year.   Another treat today, although not in the garden,  was being surrounded  by house martins swooping low over a neighbouring field as I walked the dogs, hopefully warmer weather is on the way.