Echinacea with hoverfly

This has been a frequently seen image on Blip this summer. This one is special to me as it’s the first time I’ve grown an echinacea - and just one came up, and it has one flower! Late summer flowers are really important for keeping pollinators supplied. 
A busy afternoon at Oxfam sorting a mountain of books. For the third time in the last year, the widower of Helen Dunmore brought several bags of her books in for us to sell. Without exception they are interesting books, and I put them all in the shop except one. It’s a Russian book - in English - about the siege of Leningrad.  I imagine she used it for researching one of her best novels: The Siege. I want to spend some time looking it up online next week, as it looks rare and maybe valuable.