Six on Saturday 09-06-2018

Back to work this week, sadly. An hour or two snatched in the evenings is all the garden time I am able to get, and it often feels like much of that is taken up with watering! A few things potted on, tied in, dead-headed, that’s about it. Hopefully I shall get a bit more quality time in this weekend. Still, before all that, it’s time for Six on Saturday. Six things, in the garden, on a Saturday. Could be anything – a tool, a job completed, a flower, a leaf, wildlife, a pest, a success, anything at all! Join in, do.

Here are my Six for this week

1 – Hosta flower. Last summer I was given a carrier-bag full of small hosta plants, refugees from a large clump someone wanted to thin out a bit. I put them in a pot where they struggled a bit, then later transferred them to a shady planter in the side alley. This year they seem much happier. One or two are sending up flower stalks. It wouldn’t bother me if hosta’s never flowered, I find them a bit meh. Still, here it is.

2 – Lily beetle carnage. There are two aspects to this carnage. The first is what the titular beetles have wrought upon my lillies. The second is the vengeful carnage I meted out to them. Nasty crunchy critters. I’ll focus on the first kind here, sparing you the gory details of the second. In the last month or two, I’ve spotted one or two beetles and dealt with them, but they had barely nibbled and certainly not to the point of doing much harm. The plants are all flowering or about to flower, so I figured so what, no harm done. Yesterday, however, I noticed that the stems had been entirely stripped of foliage, leaving a wasteland of tattered remains and what I can only assume is beetle crud. Not amused, although I don’t really like the flowers, so perhaps I should just dig them up and be done with it.

3 – Allium christophii. New to me this year, part of a batch of 75 alliums that I planted out last autumn. Alhough short in stature, the flowers make up for it in girth. They are huge! One of my giant mitts for scale.

4 – Penstemon ‘husker red’. Grown from seed last year, nothing much happened last summer. This year they have established well, and are now flowering profusely, tight little mainly white bells.

5 – Hosta leaf, plain, unknown. This one was helpfully labelled “hosta” when I bought it a couple of weeks ago. It is a nice shade of green, very lush looking, quilted, almost. On getting it home I divided it into 3 or 4 new plants and they are doing service in two places, some in the shade border, some in a planter.

6 – Clematis wilt (I think). Disappointing. I wonder if this is too shady a spot for even a supposedly shade-tolerant variety. Having said that, it was doing fine, then suddenly crashed into this dessicated mess, the leaves are wilting then going back and dying. I’ll cut it back to the ground. It might stage a recovery this year, but more likely not till next year. I have until then to decide whether it should get composted in favour of something more suited. Any climbers to suggest for full shade?

Those are my Six for this week, what are yours?

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Have a marvellous gardening weekend, not forgetting to check back in as more links get added.

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