In the first week of July the coreopsis started blooming. The perennial form is a wonderful well-behaved plant that expands a bit every year. It is a cheerful low maintenance plant and I see the city is growing them in sunny hot spots. Check out the shadow of this little sweat bee. Doesn't it look like she is secretly sticking her tongue out at the photographer. Cheeky!
Daisies are also blooming. They are not my favorite perennial because they are quite agressive spreaders and they smell like stinky feet. Maybe that's why it's a favorite of syrphid flies. This is another classic composite flower, and this little leaf cutter doesn't seem to mind the funk.
Scientists call her megachilidae--I just call her cutie pie. Her little shield-shaped abdomen is coated underneath with pollen and she tends to raise her back end up--there must be a yoga pose name for that--upward bee as opposed to downward dog.
This is a photo of a syrphid fly on a daisy--I have saved an article in a magazine about the decline of bees that featured a similar photograph. Real bee nerds chuckle at this sort of mistake.
Along with lavender and linden, this hedge plant is blooming and is teeming with bees, mostly honeybees in this case. I think it's a kind of syringa with thick waxy leaves--more research is required on that ID, but it makes a fabulous bee plant hedge, high and dense.
ETA: So, I think this might be a form of privet. If it is, apparently honeybees love it, but it gives un unpleasant odor to honey which beekeepers tend to feed back to the bees. I will continue to do some detective work on this.
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