More First Flowers but the same Twatted Bee

My recent bearded iris purchase, "Black Tie Affair", put forth its first bloom on Wednesday.

 Every day this past week I've been going up to the allotment with Bitey.  Not to do any allotmenteering, but to check when the first foxglove flowered.  Tuesday was First Flowering Day, but not from the foxglove I thought it was going to be.  Before I get to that, here's a video from Wednesday's wander up there: 

 

This barn owl treated me to a flyby at about five-to-eight.  Bitey didn't seem interested, but I was thrilled to see it - and have time to whip my phone out and take this video!

 

 Anyway, on to the foxgloves.  I had my eye on one in the flower bed to open first, but day after day it remained closed.  Then, on Tuesday, I noticed a rather bedraggled foxglove in the raspberry bed had actually managed to get a flower open!  On Wednesday, the Monster Foxglove in next door's allotment started to open (I'll be collecting seed from this one because I'm nothing if not a size queen!), and by Thursday, the original had opened.

Left to right: flower bed foxglove, raspberry bed, neighbour's and close-up

 

 

 As of yesterday afternoon, the unfortunate bumblebee that had garnered Bitey's attention back on the 9th was still bumbling around.  Bitey had found her again, but was just looking at her this time as she crawled surprisingly quickly along the edge of the lawn (she can't fly - due to that sticking-out wing, I imagine).  After several "rescues" from Bitey's attention over the past couple of weeks, the bee knew the drill and immediately crawled onto my hand as I bobbed down beside her.  I lifted her up and deposited her on the Echiums, as per.

 

I haven't come across her today, but no doubt she's crawling around somewhere.

 

 

 Finally, here are some photos from this morning's early jaunt (about half six) down to the beach.  I took Bitey early when it was relatively cool as today's forecast for later was 22°C - far too hot for the likes of us.