Some photos with notes
Homework first. This is a geranium.
This is a pelargonium 
This is a pelargonium 
This is a geranium
Got that?
2020 what a great year in the garden.
The famous Koelreuteria (sorry. Aka indian rain tree.) 
The wonderful Echium fastuosum
Practically invisible on this phone. Look on a computer if you can. The photo of the echium is one I took earlier, years ago . Here’s a close-up of mine, which flowered for the first time this year, after almost dying twice, in two frosty winters, it sailed through last winter and grew five spikes of bright blue flowers which the bees flock to:
All right, pinky blue. But not as pink as this photo makes out.
The camera lies
Or is it my eyes.
On my hands and knees to the very ordinary Geranium phaeum
Aubrieta at home on Parnassos
Let’s hope we can travel this year.
Orchis ustulata after rain in the Gasterntal, Switzerland
one of Skili’s first visits to St John’s, spring 2019
Tosc is a lesser mountain in the Julian alps in Slovenia, little visited but easily climbed from the south. The wonderful Vodnikov Dom, a mountain refuge with some double rooms as well as dormitories, sits beneath the sheer cliffs of Tosc’s north side. Staying there allows you to have a long day on the mountain, whose summit is a gorgeous grassy rolling plain with lots of flowers and a flock of elegant clean sheep who are so bond they will nibble at your trousers. I posted this picture on the ‘forum’ of the Scottish rock garden Society and was very pleased to get a response from a lady in New Zealand who wrote, ‘the silene of the lambs.’
The pink flower is silene – oh no, I can’t have forgotten it’s name! I’ve seen it in Ireland, on Ben Bulben, I’ve seen it in scotland, it’s common all the way through the Alps and beyond, and it’s plentiful and glorious on Tosc – it’s Silene acaulis. It came to me
