Six on Saturday 19-05-2018

Jack Frost is not quite done with us, his cold fingers are hanging on to the grim death. In recent nights, according to a local met office monitoring station, we have had lows of 0.5 deg. The monitoring station is about 10 miles aways, and I don’t think it was quite that cold here, but not far off. Last night was cold too, I was out watering at 10pm and did not want to linger, be-shorted as I was. The last frost date round here is usually mid May, so it is a little later than usual. Last night was the last of the cool nights forecast, so that should be that until mid-October or so.

Despite the chill and the accompanying frost protection activities {the plants, I’m talking about the plants!), it is time for Six on Saturday. Six things, in the garden, on a Saturday. Could be anything – a flower, a success, a failure, a plan, an interesting leaf, wildlife, anything at all. Join in!

Here are my Six for this week.

1 – Digitalis parviflora, leaf. I liked the way the sun caught the edge of this leaf. The plants are a little different than the usual biennial varieties, in appearance as well as staying power.

2 – Emerging allium flower. One of many I planted back in the autumn. I’m fairly sure this is ‘christophii’, although it could possibly be ‘violet beauty’. I have had a few alliums for years now, your basic purple sphere, so I am looking forward to some different shades and shapes of allium flowering in my garden. Allium does sound much posher than ornamental onion.

3 – Weigela, var. unknown. Still an unruly shape, still too close to the hypericum, but still flowers profusely each year. I have a small plant, a cutting taken last year, which could serve as a replacement if I ever take the plunge and remove this one. It’s entirely possible I may never do anything about it…

4 – Clematis, not sure which. Planted by my neighbour a few years ago, this clematis does most of its flowering on my side of the fence, it seems to flop over. I won’t be advising her any different, I like it this way! I’m going to take a sneaky cutting or two of this, I have a spot where one just like this would work well.

5 – Maidenhair fern frond. One of many ferns I planted earlier this year in my living wall thingy. Some are deciduous and only recently started replacing last year’s fronds. This one is particularly green and lush. It should get to about 30cm tall.

6 – Wisteria floribunda, japanese wisteria. I’m not sure of the exact cultivar, but japanese it is, having as it does the characteristic longer, more spread out racemes. I’ve been getting a pretty good show from it, both sunny and shady sides of the trellis it occupies, since I started pruning it properly a couple of years back. This year I want to extend the plant in both directions so it occupies the fence line on the left side of the garden, and the trellis across the arch on the right. I did the same thing with the arch last year and it has filled out nicely. I’ll train the whippy stems in rather than pruning them. I might not get many flowers on those stems next year but it should do the job the following year.

Those are my Six for this week, what are yours? If you’d like to join in, please do – it’s fun and dead easy. Just write your post, tweet your tweets, insta your gram, or facebook your facebook thingy, and put a link to it below in the comments so everyone can see it. Maybe add a link back to this blog in your post, that’s it.

Have a fab weekend, enjoy the sunshine if you got it, and don’t forget to check back in as more posts get added during the day.

I’ll be back next week with another Six on Saturday.