A couple of years ago we hired a house with a large, flowerful garden during our summer holiday.
Because of the flowers there were loads of insects.
One plant in particalar attracted an enourmous load of flying insects. At one moment there were five buterflies at the same time on this plant.
I had to look up which plant it was and found out that it was named: Telekia speciosa, also known as the heart-leaved oxeye or yellow oxeye.

I had written it down, but forgot about it until last year. I found an online store that sold these flowers, so I ordered a couple these small plants for my backyard.
Unfortunately the first year they didn't get any flowers. They should have been hardy and survive the winter, but they completely disappeared 😟

Until April this year. I spotted some small plants with large leaves in my garden border.
They were back! They started growing bigger and bigger and after a few months they even grew flowers. I was so happy!

They were as nice as I remembered and when they flowered. In the photo above only one flower was opened. After a few days when more flowers were blooming the plant started attracting insects!

This one was taken on an overcast day, so it is a bit dark. The hoverfly is clearly enjoying the nectar of the flower. I love how you can see the pollen stick to its body.

Last weekend the weather was a bit better, so I could shoot with a higher aperture value. I really like the compound eyes of insects.

At first I thought this was a bee, but after checking the photo with my Obsidentify app (a recommendation!) I discovered it is a common drone fly. Hover flies are often confused with bees.

And then the reason why I wanted to have these plants in my backyard; butterflies. This weekend I finally spotted the first butterflies 😍
This red admiral clearly couldn't resist my Ox-eyes. I hope he will tell his friends about it 😀

Thanks for reading my blog!