Finally, finally, it seems the summer is starting :). What a joy! Nice temperatures, plenty of sun, and beautiful nature. Everywhere you look you see fields full of wildflowers and butterflies and bees fluttering around. It is wonderful to take a walk now and so I do that almost every day. There is always something beautiful to see. I so enjoy all the colors and scents.

Especially the elderberry bush smells wonderfully sweet when you pass it. It is currently blooming everywhere. And although I don’t really find it the most beautiful plant to see, the wonderful scent makes up for that ;). People here often pick the flowers to make lemonade syrup, for example, or even to bread and bake them. You can find plenty of recipes online using elderberry blossom.

Something I really enjoy doing is picking cuttings of beautiful plants or flowers that I come across in the wild, in the woods, or along the roadside, and put them somewhere in my garden, in the hope that they will grow there. Of course, that doesn’t always work, but sometimes it does and that’s a thrill! A lovely free plant for me :). I came across the flowers on the picture below last year, but I don’t know what they are. If you know, please tell me :).

Two years ago, for example, I was walking through a piece of forest when I saw a beautiful specimen. A plant with purple flowers that climbed up the walls of the old vineyards. I pulled out 2 cuttings and took them with me to plant in my garden under our terrace. Each cutting on one side. First, such a plant will start hanging and lose its flowers, and sometimes that means the end of it. If it doesn’t die right away, there’s a good chance it will catch on. So did these cuttings. One seemed to have died immediately, the other remained a bit green. Last year, however, they both came up beautifully and this year they are already quite big. They don’t carry flowers yet, but I’m sure they will come.

Years ago, a friend gave me a »Spring Rose« that she had collected from the forest. It has dark red/purple flowers, a bit of a dull color, but it grows like a weed. They are also available with white/yellow flowers. In Slovenian, this plant is called »Teloh«. The picture is from a few years ago. The plant has grown at least 3 times as large since then!

Last year, I noticed some beautiful light purple bells everywhere along the side of the road. So I pulled a small bush out of the ground and planted it in my garden. I looked them up and I think they are called bellflowers. The bush I had brought with me also had 2 or 3 daisies in it. All the flowers were gone in no time after I had planted them in my garden, but to my surprise, I recently saw a whole bunch of daisies in the garden :). Unfortunately, the bellflowers did not work.

Something I still regret is that we removed a beautiful Mock orange (Jasmine) shrub that was in the garden when we bought the place. It was standing just where I started my vegetable garden and when I wanted to expand that garden, later on, the bush was in the way, so Bine took it out. Stupid, stupid, stupid. It had beautiful white flowers that also smelled wonderful. You see them quite often on the side of the road here, so maybe I should try a cutting. Maybe in a few years, we will have such a beautiful shrub again, but in the right place this time :).