Six on Saturday 18-05-2019

Spring is on the finishing straight. That went fast! All those long months of waiting for it to happen, then before you know what’s going in, it’s nearly done. As I write this, in the corner of my eye I can see some very bedraggled tomato plants which I must pot on and move to their proper place in the greenhouse. Definitely a job for the weekend. I just forget to water them in their current location on the spare room window cill. Before I get on with that, time for Six on Saturday, six things, in the garden, on a Saturday. Could be anything – a harvest, a flower, a bug, a success, a failure, a favourite tool, anything at all. Join in!

Here are my Six for this week.

1 – Rose ‘Danse de feu’. I have five of these now, four of which are from cuttings of the original. Two, including the original, are planted in full shade, where they are quite happy, flowering away (eventually). Three are on the fenceline on my sunniest border. These are all flowering whereas their shady cousins are some weeks away from that I’d say. The flowers are an electric red but regrettably fragrance free.  This is their second year in the ground, so they are still establishing. I am hoping they put on some more height this year.

2 – Verbascum. Grown from seed last year or possibly even the year before, I only recently got around to planting it out. It has responded by flowering. I’m pretty sure the seeds were from a white form, but these are emphatically purple.  Oh well.

3 – Weigela, var unknown. This is a very untidy shrub, I’ve never pruned it and it is probably not totally happy in a shady spot. It is, however, flowering like mad just now. A veritable riot of pink.  I must remember to prune it for shape once it has flowered.

4 – Iris versicolor, blue flag iris. I grew this from seed a couple of years ago, or maybe it was last year, can’t recall. I certainly only planted it out last summer.  For a while now it has been teasing me with maybe they’re flowers, maybe they’re just more leaves. Finally it has made up its mind.  Pretty!

5 – Clematis montana ‘Marjorie’.  Another £1.76 purchase from Morrisons last year, this plant has shot up, doing a decent job of covering a chunk of wall. It’s at about 10′ high now and it will grow even more.  The flowers are double and tinged pink.  I’m wondering if it will tolerate a bit of shade – I have some cuttings on the go, I’d like to plant along the shady fenceline to provide some interest while the shrubs recover from their annual hard prune.

6 – Digitalis something-or-other.  I distinctly recall these being advertised as Sutton’s apricot.  Well they very much aren’t. Sutton’s lary pink, more like.  It could be that I’ve mixed this up with some foxgloves from last year’s mystery seed batch. Regardless, they are a tremendous plant.  Planted out last summer, it has been bulking out ever since and over the last month or two has grown upwards too. There are 7 flower spikes on this one plant, so worth waiting the 15 months since sowing. Hopefully the bumble bees will appreciate it. The landing lights are on…

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Have a wonderful weekend, hope you get a good chunk of time in the garden. Don’t forget to check back in later on as more links get added during the day.

I’m off to get my plants ready for my local Hardy Plant Society plant fair. I aim to come back with less plants than I started with. Yeah, right!

I’ll be back next weekend with another #SixOnSaturday.