what's the buzz?

It looks like the past few weeks (months?) finally caught up with me and I got a nasty dose of the midsummer 'flu last week that had me laid up at home with barely enough energy to feed myself.
Poor me.
But it's Monday again so I'll have another bash at a new week.

My patience finally paid off last weekend and after hours of crawling on my belly in the garden I snapped a couple of photos of some of our local wildlife. OK, "a couple" may be understating a bit. I think I must have taken close to 30 shots to get just a couple of decent ones, the best of which is probably this...

FYI: bees move around a lot. And fast.

I must say, in stalking these creatures with my camera I discovered that they're a quite a lot like me. Buzzing around doing stuff all day long, following the same path to work (my Lavender plants) then buzzing off home again to look after the hive (Do bumblebees live in hives? I presume so...) and finally getting some rest when the sun goes down, only to start all over again in the morning.
It's a fun life, innit?!
Only, of course, bees don't carry cameras.

I like my little garden. It has a nice patch of grass where we can lie and lap up the sun on weekends. [Insert witty 'Irish Summer' jokes here]
There are some pretty cool plants and young trees in it too. These flowers...

...blow me away though - they are just so bright in colour! Only trouble is I have no idea what they are. Can anyone tell me? That way when I tell people I have such lovely flowers I can actually not sound like a complete ignoramus when they ask me what kind they are and I say things like, "Uh, some sort of bulb I think..."
Er, no, I wouldn't be the greatest horticulturalist in the world.
I just like pretty flowers :)

Of course while I was waiting for the bees to put in an appearance I happily snapped away at other stuff too, and I quite like how this one turned out:

No, one doesn't often see cactus plants surviving in Ireland, but we've managed to nurture these for about 3 years now. We just have to remember to put it outside in the sunshine whenever there is some available, and in wet weather it lives under shelter or inside.

And that's it for today - stay tuned for more of The Exciting World Of Terri's Back Yard coming soon!