Six on Saturday 29-06-2019

The predicted hot and sunny weather took a few to days to rock up, but here it is. Fortunately we don’t have to deal with the dangerously hot temperatures they have on the continent just now. Low to mid 20s here for the last couple of days and mid-20s today. Rather nice summer weather that I think the garden will appreciate.

Before I slap on the suncream and head out to the garden, it’s time for Six on Saturday. Six things, in the garden, on a Saturday. Could be anything – a flower, an insect, a plan, a tool, an epic fail, a glorious success, anything at all. Join in!

Here are my Six for this week.

1 – Astrantia ‘Star of Beauty’. It may not surprise you to know that I bought this plant half price at the end of season sale. It may also not surprise you to know that I immediately divided it into three. All are now flowering away. The flowers are smaller than I imagined they would be, not having grown astrantia before. I worry they are in too sunny a spot, but they seem to be doing ok.

2 – Lobelia erinus “Mrs Clibran’. I grew a tray of these this year from seed. It’s a fiddly business as the seeds are tiny and the resulting seedlings are also small. Life is too short to prick them out individually so they went into modules in little patches. This is not my first lobelia seed rodeo. Normally I forget to water them, or forget to plant them out, or both, then end up buying some. This year I have managed successfully to take them from seed through to planting out and indeed flowering. The photo originally came out very purple, but the flowers are quite blue. I adjusted the tone until the flowers more closely match the real colour, but that has left the surrounding stems and foliage looking a bit washed out. I have them planted around the edge of pots and containers, Mrs C is a trailer so should flow over the edges.

3 – Papaver ‘Lauren’s Grape’. For the sake of completeness I thought I should show these, having trailed them last week as buds. They are a good colour, but live a short life in bloom, a day or two at most, before dropping petals to leave the seed heads to develop. I think these are the third set of flowers since showing the buds last week. Better to burn out than to fade away seems to be their mantra. I will definitely scatter some of those seeds again, they will be welcome returners next year.

4 – Cosmos bipinnatus. Or at least I think they are. These (probably) came from the RHS member’s seed scheme. I ended up with about 15 plants, not bad for me given cosmically bad luck with the cosmos the last few years. I did try to grow another couple of types, I can’t remember now which ones, or indeed how many of those germinated, or which plants originated from them. Shoddy record keeping. I like cosmos for the jolly flowers but also for the wispy foliage.

5 – Gazania. This pot contains 4 or 5 gazania plants. I was not expecting them to survive the winter, so they only exist now because I never quite got around to emptying the pot. They close up unless it is quite bright out. My handy gazaniometer says: Sunny.

6 – Teasel, with passenger. This teasel plant was a seedling from last year’s batch of mystery seeds. I initially mis-identified it as a foxglove so planted it in a fairly shady spot with the others. It became clear this spring that it wasn’t, but took a while for me to figure out what it was. It is about 7 feet tall, with about 20 flower heads on it. I plan to leave the seed heads on once the flowers are done, I gather goldfinches love a bit of teasel seed as a winter snack. As a bonus extra, I think the yellow guy is Psyllobora vigintiduopunctata, the 22-spot ladybird, native to these shores.

Those are my Six, what are yours? If you’d like to join the gang, just publish your post and pop a link to it in the comments below. I do allow pingbacks on my site, but those typically don’t generate as many return hits as a link pasted in with a comment. If you also mention my blog in yours that would be lovely. Read the brief guide for more details and other ways to participate.

It looks like being a sunny and hot weekend, at least round these parts, so I shall be out in the garden for sure. Don’t forget to check back in during the day as more links get added.

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