Chive cha cha

A day for gardening. Everywhere is growing like crazy and the colours are rioting. There's a heady mix of rhododendrons (purple and red), azaleas ( magenta and orange), flags (yellow) and cornflowers (blue). I tackled a herb bed which was getting overgrown with bog grass and ferns. Hard work. The cat supervised. She loved the thyme and the oregano - what a nice fragrant pillow!

The chives are flowering and there are bees everywhere - mainly bumbles but some honey bees too. Apparently there are 20 different species of native bumble bee in Ireland and I think this fine ginger chap is a common carder bee - sounds a bit more impressive in Latin, a bombus pascorum.