Dye Garden in summer (and going down with crash!)

The Dye garden has n ever looked so good and many of the dye plants are now in flower.

Saffloweer Carthamus tinctoria just opening leaning against Hopi Red dye Amaranthus whatsit-must ask Enys for the correct Latin name as it is in none of my dye books, ( she has the one on North American Dye plants) . Behind it is Cosmos and the green is Persicaria tinctoria
Vipers Bugloss -Echium vulgare. It is a huge attractor for bees and so I managed to get one with a bee on it . This is a member of the Boriganacae family many of which give purple or blues with the roots. Someone on Natural Dyes Online mentioned a couple of years ago that they had got blue from the root. This is why we grow it ostensibly but really because Enys adores it and because it attracts bees. ( And I love it too) I haven't tried it yet. Why? Because you have to dig it up and although I always tell visitors to the garden that Enys won't let me dig it up really I couldn't bear too either. It is such a fabulous blue too.
In front the Vipers bugloss, behind Genista tinctora just opening ,with common yarrow Achilleia millifolium in full flower. You can't really see it but the Staghorn Sumach Rhus typhina is in full flower. I have never seen so many on it before and I wonder whether the flowers give any colour. Has anyone tried them?

Behind the bears is dyers chamomile Anthemis tinctoria , which is what the children will use when the BBC come to film a children's science programme in a couple of weeks. It is called Nina and the Neurones.
And the crash
A Chest infection -out of the blue not preceded by anything but an itchy cough which I put down to hay fever . So now I am on massive doses of steroids to keep my lung function from dropping to hospital admission level and antibiotics. The trouble with the steroids is that make you disinclined to sleep and to want to eat and eat and eat because you never feel full. OH woe!
Still the dye garden is lovely and DH loves doing the routine jobs like weeding and watering. And my poor student who was coming on Monday has had to pull out because of an injury to her wrist so in some ways it is all panning out. We are hoping she can rebook when she starts to recover.
I am going to have to slow down! sigh.
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