The unknown plant/shrub

I found this plant/shrub in my wildflower border last year. It grew rather large (as you can see from the first photo) so I moved it to the border next to the back fence. My attempts to identify it have failed, but it now has some rather distinctive flowers.







Coincidentally my father who lives about 250 miles away also has the same unknown plant in his garden (also flowering for the first time this year).

Does anyone have any idea what it is please?

Fruit and nuts

Although we do have a few trees actually in the ground in our garden the majority are currently living in pots. I, or other members of my family, have grown most of them from seed and they currently range from a one inch tall norway spruce to a two foot tall horse chestnut. There will, however, come a time when all these trees need a new home. Hopefully we shall own some land by then. Fingers crossed.

Most of the trees are native species, but I do have a number of others, the majority of which are fruit or nut trees.

These pear and apricot trees were grown from seed.





I do hope that they produce edible fruit, but the majority of fruit trees being grafted these days they probably won't taste anything like the fruit that they came from.

This damson was bought from a garden center (I haven't seen damsons in the shops for years and therefore couldn't grow one from seed). It produced a single fruit for the first time this year:



Ian's grandad gave us this grape:



Pretty much all the white mulberry seeds I bought from Nicky's Nursery germinated, but my black mulberries from the New Forest Otter and Owl Center have yet to germinate:



This is an almond I grew from a nut in one of those big multipacks of nuts that they sell in supermarkets at Christmas.



I also tried growing walnuts at the same time, but although they germinated they went mouldy before the seedling made it to the surface. Will have to try again this Christmas.

These varieties of walnut are more exotic and therefore bought as seedlings:





White walnut or butternut.



Heartnut.

I particularly like that the heartnut is supposed to readily split into two halves.

Migrant hawker

The pair of migrant hawkers returned for several hours today. This is the male:







As you can see he was not at all bothered by my presence:

In the garden

Today Ian spotted two hawker dragonflies hawking over the garden and I was lucky enough to catch this female migrant hawker when it settled on a fence post:



Inspired by the dragonflies I decided to have a good root around the garden to see what wildlife I could find. The nettles at the bottom of the garden have been well and truly munched by these caterpillars of the comma butterfly





one of which had already formed a chrysalis:



We've kept a pile of logs and broken fence panel slats near the pond for nearly a year now in the hope that reptiles and amphibians would hide underneath. Until now we've only been rewarded with slugs, but today we were pleased to find an adult slow worm - the first we've seen this year:

Found it!

It turns out that I spoke too soon regarding the large moth and that it had in fact remained inside the house (though I can't imagine where). It showed up in the bathroom this morning and was very relieved to be let out after being photographed.



To the naked eye and with the flash off it looked a very dull brown - similar to a ringlet butterfly, but the flash revealed quite a distinctive pattern. It's the largest moth I've seen here in Devon and with wings spread was the size of a peacock butterfly. All suggestions as to the species are most welcome.

Inside and out

This week we've had a huge variety of insects in the garden including several Jersey tiger moths:







We've also had some insects in the house including a huge moth last night. Unfortunately our tabby cat William chased it and it flew under the cooker in panic. It did come out later on, but I was unable to photograph it before putting it outside.

This grasshopper hopped into the kitchen on Tuesday (it hopped back on to the house wall when I came in for the camera)



and this ichneumon fly spent much of the week on the dining room ceiling before coming down to the window and being helped outside

Planting combinations

I've spent many hours looking through gardening books and on the internet trying to find the best plants to group together, but as yet I've rarely managed to get it right in practice. Either a key plant dies or never flowers (as was the case with all my delphiniums and echinaceas that I had such high hopes for) or decides to flower a whole two months earlier than it says in the books (we did have a particularly warm spring) or flowers late because it is only the first year of growth.

Consequently most of my perennials have moved at least twice in an attempt to group things sensibly.

This month there is one little area of the garden that I am particularly pleased with and have no plans to change. It consists of a patch of only three plants: Persicaria amplexicaulis 'firetail', the beautiful Calamagrostis acutiflora 'overdam' grass and Monarda (commonly known as the herb Bergamot) 'Cambridge scarlet'.