Down in the Jungle

Despite many weeks of neglect and the predations of our four-footed friends, the jungle is putting on a surprisingly good show.

The untidy English cottage garden effect has come into its own.

 And the hardy hybdrangeas are positively rampant.

 Even the delphiniums, usually eaten by slugs before they even have a chance to bloom had clearly flowered in my absence and even spread. This is telling me something. Perhaps I've been wasting my time gardening all along and should just sit back and let things be. Mind you, there was nothing there before I started planting, of course.
  Meanwhile, an unfamiliar visitor, ensconced in the daylily.

I never thought I would hear myself calling a spider beautiful. I am a class A arachnophobe, especially when they're scuttling all round the boat and falling out of the sails and down my neck. (The spraying in the marina clearly didn't have a lasting effect.) But this fellow - well that's different. Plus it's outside and not moving. I'm reliably informed it's an Argiope Aurantia, which sounds exotic, aka a black-and-yellow garden spider, which doesn't. At any rate, it has a healthy appetite for flies and mosquitoes. Perhaps we should get more of them. Or then again, perhaps not.