I walked a couple of my favourite butterfly walks this week. A decent enough showing of common butterflies but not abundant. Hard to say whether we're having a good or bad year. 

 The dry, sunny spring into summer should have helped. Then again the parched conditions have restricted the growth of wildflowers i.e. food plants. On both these routes Brambles in flower were the main forage for pollinators.  

Mellow Mallow

 

Marbled White takes flight.

 

 Sunset on the longest day, the summer solstice, from the Weston Hills overlooking Baldock. The skies had been cloudy then cleared to reveal a fiery orb in a haze of grey and pink.

Self seeder: this single Musk Mallow in a sea of Munstead Lavender...

 The self-seeders in my front garden are always guerrilla gardening. I see Bloody Cransebill has made good its escape through the railings joining Michaelmas Daisy, Herb Robert and Red Valerian. Likewise Trailing Bellflower has trailed out into the world.

 Here is a wonderful though unintended juxtaposition. In the foreground is Viper's Bugloss (Echium vulgare) which grows wild in the UK. I grew one in my front garden a year or two back which self-seeded through the railings into the gaps and cracks in the pavement.

 In the background there are a couple of towering specimens of Echium wildpretti. The Giant Echiums -sometimes called Giant Viper's bugloss- are native to the Canary Islands and these two are self-seeded descendants of one I planted at the front five or six years ago.

 Two distinctly different though closely related species from the same family Boraginaceae have both prospered in the same way in the same urban location. Viper's Bugloss is invariably mentioned in lists of the five or ten best native plants to grow for bees and its giant relative would certainly make the non-native shortlist.