Six on Saturday 18-08-2018

Back from holidays, back to work for a week, normal service is resumed.  Still a novelty round these parts, earlier this week we had some proper rain. It has rained on rare occasions since May, but not for long and not heavily. This rain was heavy and lasted for hours. Good, useful garden rain. Useful to the point of not needing to spend hours watering myself. That kind of useful.  The forecast for the weekend is drab. Grey and overcast, but dry. Excellent gardening weather!  Before all that, time for Six on Saturday. Six things, in the garden, on a Saturday. Could be anything! A flower, a pest, a failure, a disaster, wildlife, a plan, anything at all. Join in!

Here are my Six for this week.

1 – Clematis ‘Rebecca’ seed head,  Having flowered profusely, this clematis has produced the usual seed heads. Up close, they are almost as fascinating as the flowers.

2 – Strobiles, or hops. The flowers of the hop plant are the part used in the brewing process for some types of beer. I have two of these plants now, one a division of the other, both growing up fences or trellis It’s a dwarf variety so doesn’t get above 6 or 7 feet.

3 – Gazanias.  A while back I was kicking myself for not planning the patio pots. After the tulips died back, I hadn’t organised anything to go in the many pots I have knocking about.  I half solved this by buying a few trays of annuals, including these gazania.  Inertia got the better of me again, I only managed to plant about half of them up. Still, the patio is looking a little livelier now.

4 – Helenium autumnale.  I have a few clumps of this around and about, generated by dividing the original few plants that I grew from seed. In past years they have been about 4′ tall, and with colours ranging from bright yellow to a mix of orangey reds. This year for reasons best know to the plants, they are a good 6′ tall and all are bright yellow. Perhaps they’ll colour up over the coming weeks. We shall see.

5 – Weeds. For a while the hot dry weather was keeping the weeds at bay on the drive in the front garden. A few weeks back I rigged up the irrigation system which waters the planters at the front of the house. The weeds have reacted with enthusiasm to the resulting leakage and are busy recolonising the drive. My usual remedy is to get the hoe and chop them off. They grow back again, but it only takes 10 minutes to clear out.  A job for the weekend.

6 – Calendula ‘Snow Princess’.  Probably not at its best in this photo, these were grown from seed this year. I don’t normally bother with annuals from seed, but this year have grown a few. I’m not convinced by these, not sure I’d do again.

Those are my Six, what are yours?  If you’d like to join in, please do, just publish your post, twit your tweet, face your book, insta your gram, whatever, then pop a link to it below in the comments. If you also mention my blog in yours, that would be splendid. For more details, check out the brief participant guide.

Have a super gardening weekend, don’t forget to check in during the day as more links are added.

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