OOOOHHHH WOW, where do I start!! My gardening soul is doing backflips of delight!!! Lots and lots of beautiful, gorgeous, wonderful flowers growing wild around Lake Teletskoye where we are staying. There's a lovely lake, some mountains and all these flowers! Look at the piccies if you haven't already.
Highlights are seeing lots of common UK garden plants in their native habitat: bergenia, spirea, PAEONIES (!bounces! I saw my first wild tree paeony!), brunnera, bistort, giant hogweed?, polemonium; all growing in very wet conditions around the lake. There were also different species of euphorbias, umbellifers, lots of beautiful ferns, different buttercups, iris, orchids, salvias, stitchworts, elders, cornus, leguminacae; so much! Best of all there were things that I didn't have a clue what they were! Help with ID please! You can post comments on the piccy if you recognise it. Poor Andy couldn't get more than 2 yards without an "OOOO, come and look at THIS!". Eventually he left me to it, and walked on with the two dogs who had decided to come with us. They appeared separately, walked for a couple of hours with us along the lake edge, playing together and turned back when we did, and walked back to the vllage with us. It was lovely that they chose to keep us company for a while.
I definately want to go back there, as it was one of the most beautiful places I have been. Maybe a bit later in the season to see what is growing.....