Six on Saturday 19-10-2019

Ahoy there! A nautical greeting seems appropriate, since we have had veritable oceans of rain in recent weeks, the last few days being no different. The garden is very green as a result, but also a little beaten up and boggy in places.  Time for Six on Saturday. Six things, in the garden, on a Saturday. Could be anything – a flower, pestilence, a bug, a favourite tool, a job to do, anything at all. Join in!

Here are my Six for this week…

1 – Cotinus. This shrub is mostly quite annoying, but does have one or two redeeming features. The colour of the leaves this time of year is one of them. They have not fully turned but this leafy venn diagram caught my eye.

2 – Clematis tangutica. The glossy seed heads are just as lovely as the flowers, I think. There are zillions of them.

3 – Hesperantha cocc. x ‘zeal salmon’.  It’s not the best picture, the plant has been battered by a heavy downpour in the last couple of days. Still, I’m delighted to see this plant finally flowering. I grew it from seed years ago, I think it was among the very first batch of HPS seed I got back in early 2016 or possibly even 2015. I didn’t realise at the time, but they take years to flower, this is their first appearance. Not much is starting to flower at this time of year, so these are most welcome. I may need to move the clump to a more prominent position once they have died back, in their current spot they are difficult to find, never mind see.

4 – Mina lobata, or ipomoea lobata, take your pick. I think I included a close-up of this some weeks back. An encore is justified, it is covered top to bottom in flowers.  They were slow to get going once pricked out, but soon got into their stride, doing much better once planted out. There are just two or three plants here, covering two 6′ fence panels between them.  The flowers are beginning to go to seed, but absent frost, they should keep producing new ones. I will attempt to collect some seed for next year.

5 – Hedychium, ornamental ginger, hardy.  Gill Heavens, of this parish, sent me unsolicited ginger seeds back in April. I ended up with four seedlings which have stayed stubbornly teeny, 1-2cm.  Last week I went to a talk on hedychiums by the national collection holder, Andrew Gaunt.  Among the plants he was showing off were this year’s seedlings, easily a metre tall. What?! When I described the size of mine he winced in sympathy, never a good sign. Apparently I should have fed them. Sigh. I’ve given them a late season nosh-up, and they have responded by edging begrudgingly upwards by 1cm or so. They’re in the greenhouse, but I’ll have to bring them indoors for the winter, I’m told they won’t have put on enough bulk under the soil to survive a frost.

6 – Spider.  I don’t often include photos of beasties here but I spotted this specimen among the fading geranium leaves. I’m not sure what variety of garden spider it is, I suspect it’s a pretty common type. Answers on a postcard.

Those are my Six, what are yours?  Do share, just publish your post and pop a link to it in the comments below. If you also mention my blog in yours that would fab.  For more details you can read the brief guide.

I hope you get some gardening done at the weekend, I’m hoping for some dry spells so I can potter about purposefully. Mainly I plan to think hard about planting bulbs then mutter and put it off for another week. Don’t forget to check back in as links get added during the day.

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