We're in the middle of summer here in The Netherlands. And like most other places in the world, it's warm. We haven't had any rain for a long time and my garden really needs some.

When having a lot of warm days without any rain in a row, you have to pay a bit more attention to your plants. This is something I sometimes tend to forget which you can tell by the state of these strawberry plants. They don't look very happy. Hanging in a pot they are exposed to so much sunlight, so I actually should water them daily. I did water them right after I took this photo. It's cool to see how flexible plants are because they are looking quite fresh now again. I don't see any strawberries growing yet though.

I do really have to water the entire garden because there are no signs that it is going to rain anywhere soon. But that will have to wait until late in the evening....

What did grow was our gray willow. It's a lovely tree that gives us a lot of nice shade in summer. The only thing is it grows really fast in summer. Long stems grow towards the sun. I want to keep it from growing too big, so I need to trim it a couple of times a year. Yesterday I decided that it was time for its haircut again. On the picture below you can see I already started its haircut in the middle.

Since the tree is very big I bought this very handy telescope cutter a couple of years ago. I used to cut the branches standing on a ladder, but this was quite hard and also dangerous when placing the ladder on the soil.
The cutter reaches up to five or six meters. Since it cuts one branch at a time, it takes some time to clear the whole tree. Although it's nice working outside in the sun, looking up all the time does give you a stiff neck after a while 😂

Just look at the pile of branches I cut off. I have filled up our entire 240 liters garbage bin for organic waste and still have some left.
Luckily they will come to pick it up on Friday.

I also checked up on the prunes. I noticed two of them had fallen off and most of them were still green. There was a small twig (see the picture) that had five plums on it and was hanging down already, so I tied it up with a rubber band.
Let's hope they will be ripe before we go on holiday for three weeks at the start of august or else we cannot enjoy these really sweet treats!

Some other prunes are starting to get the right color, which is a bit of purple. I doubt if I should put a net around it to protect them from the birds, but the plums are not in plain sight. But I think I regret when the jackdaws do find the, before we can eat them.

Some of the plants are already starting to wither. Most of the oxeyes have had their best time. Last year I dollected the seeds from the flowers and grow new plants this year. I've sold a lot of them on an online marketplace, but still have a few left. Maybe I will plant those somewhere in a public park or something.

Despite the oxeye plants having withered, they still attracted some insects. Last week I took a picture of this dragonfly sitting on it. Check out my recent blog for more pictures.

Today I noticed another butterfly in my backyard too. As you might know I've been trying to attract insects and particularly butterflies to my backyard. I have quite some flowers to attract them, but since the number of butterflies has been declining over the years, I don't see them very often.
So when I do spot one, I'm very happy and grab my camera.
The one I spotted today was a painted lady on my butterfly bush.
I just love the patterns on the wings and the symmetry of these insects.

Do you have a lot of butterflies in your garden?
What do you do to attract them?

Well, this was it for my #hivegarden #gardenjournal for this

Friendlymoose