Feed the pollinating insects! No blooms cut before their time!

Hello everyone,

I hope you are well, and the 33 degree celcius temperatures (London, Ont. and Ontario) haven't taken too bad a toll on you.

I was out in the garden this morning, looking around at the varied plants in bloom.  Catnip grown to the size of small shrubs have taken up residence between the burgundy day lilies in what is - or was - an almost formal perennial flower bed several years ago.  This same bed also has a plant called Elecampane.  It should be called Elephancampane, from the size of its lower, largest leaves: 70cm long and 30 cm wide.  At almost 2m tall it's beginning to flower.  For all the leaves it produces the flowers are maybe 10cm across, multi-petal yellow. They are in bloom and they stay.

The herb garden has an established hedgerow of agrimony, which sends out long stems and blooms with yellow flowers all along. I'm discovering it would be a weed in another location.

So alkanet might be described as a weed in a farm field locale.  Bugloss, it's called too.  It has the most astounding blue flowers on long stems. 

Avens spreads and blooms.  Another weed by another name.

There are also daylilies in yellow, burgundy, and organge standard blooms, blue balloon flowers, parsley about to come into flower, catmint getting to a second flowering, red burgundy, what I call sun drops (not sure if they are a form of evening primrose).  Two rescued butterfly weed are recovering and taking on size.  I'm hoping for bloom.

Everything is about bloom right now. Everything is about food for pollinating insects.

Without getting into reference articles - a first for me! - if a plant is blooming or about to, it stays.  Never mind that usually I'd prune back things for show-off space, or wider paths, or just because it's invading (like the Jerusalem artichokes!).  If there's pollen and nectar for the pollinating insects, the plant stays. 

A week or so ago the Ontario Beekeepers Association actually called for a halt to the use of Neonicotinoid pesticides.  This adds their voice to many others in Canada who want to get rid of a bee-killing herbicide.  Colony collapse disorder continues.  European countries are several years ahead of us in banning these pesticides.

The important thing I can do in my own yard these days is to let the plant life happen, and wonder at the  dozens of fat bees that feed in my purple burgamot and the insects feeding throughout the various other blooms.

Very best regards,

Why's Woman