Late August is the traditional time for shearing Lavender, in this case Lavendula angustifolia 'Munstead'. The method is common to all Lavenders: trim the stems taking care to go no more than an inch into the new foliage and not into the woody sections of stem. Lavenders grow best from the green and do not recover well from a hard prune.

 The number of plants for pollinators dwindles by late summer. Even more so this year with the heatwaves and drought. Plants have flowered earlier and for shorter periods. So the various Sedums grown in gardens are especially valuable with their drought tolerance and autumn flowering.

 

 I went to fill up a watering can and found this frog stranded by the reduced water level after weeks with no rain. I gathered it up in a bucket and deposited it in the undergrowth next to a nearby pond.

 

 Time to harvest the Comfrey to make stinky Comfrey tea. The dark liquid in the bucket is from a barrelful I brewed several months ago so it's no longer smelly. The thinking is that the deep tap roots of Comfrey gather up NPK from the soil which makes a rich fertiliser when the leaves are steeped in water. Actually a bit like horse dung I don't mind the initial pong.

 Love-in-a-Mist (Nigella damascena) flowers in midsummer. An annual, by late summer the sky blue flowers have become equally decorative bulbous seed heads.

 Walking across Oughtonhead Common which has been described as a mosaic of habitats: grassland and scrub, wet and dry woodland, river and marsh with fen characteristics. The damp soil sustains a late flush of wildflowers like Purple Loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria). 

Water Mint (Mentha aquatica)

Hemp Agrimony (Eupatorium cannabinum)

Great Willowherb (Eupatorium hirsutum)

 

 A stunner for long flowering late summer colour (and bees). I know it as Perovskia atriplicifolia but I see it has been reassigned to the Salvia genus and is now S. yangii. This one is probably the cultivar 'Blue Spire'. Common name: Russian Sage.

 There is a buzz around concepts like re-wilding and meadow making. Not a bad thing but it's worth bearing in mind that nature is always seeking to re-wild itself. Sections of this churchyard in Hitchin have been fenced off during restoration work on the church itself. The unmown and untrodden areas of grass are starting to revert to a meadow-like turf of their own accord.

 Five minutes walk away an exercise in urban meadow creation has taken place. A couple of years ago areas of this park were scraped back to bare earth and sowed with a wildflower mix. The grass quickly grew back (standard rye grasses are a very effective and pervasive ground cover). The wildflowers didn't amount to much.

 However the areas have not been mown over summer leaving the grass to grow quite tall. Among them an attractive display of wildflowers, mostly the "weeds" that were already present in the turf before the attempt to create a new meadow. Moral of the tale: don't cut the grass so often and the wildflowers will come. 

 The exquisite artistry of flowers: a close-up of Wild Chicory (Cichorium intybus).

 This has been a good year for butterflies. Last year was a disaster, cold and damp in spring through to early summer. I thought that would have a knock-on effect but the hot dry sunny conditions have had a positive effect.

 Be interesting to see how the migratory butterflies of late summer fare e.g. Red Admiral and Painted Lady. By contrast I wonder if the extreme heat on the continent will have an adverse influence? I'm thinking of factors like the spate of wildfires such as the huge one in France at the moment.

 Very clement weather in the UK currently after an unsettled period. Starting to feel like late summer, mellow warmth and sunshine. 

 

 Late summer beckons, flower heads become seed heads.

 

Harebell (Campanula rotundifolia)