By the time you read this I will be recovering from an excess of cocktails (we had friends round on Friday night), and may or may not get any gardening done. On Sunday I have another long race, 50km this time and then of course it will be a lengthy build up to the football. I might get the lawn mowed and edged, but that might be it!

Time for Six on Saturday. Six things, in the garden, on a Saturday. could be anything – a flower, a plan, a disaster, a success, a harvest, anything at all. Join in!

Here are my Six for this week.

1 – Mahonia x media ‘Winter Sun’. Delivered earlier in the week, my intention with this is to plug a long noted gap in the shady border. This mahonia can get quite big, several metres eventually, although I’ll probably prune it to keep it under control. It is some way short of that currently, and would disappear into the border if I planted it in its current state. I’m minded to move it to a bigger container and stage it in the intended spot for now, perhaps up on some bricks so it gets some light. That would do for now, at least until winter when most other things will die back.

2 – Brodiaea ‘Queen Fabiola’. To be honest, I thought I’d binned these bulbs ages ago, a casualty (or so I thought) of some bulb rearranging. Turns out I must have re planted them among some daffodil bulbs. I’m quite glad I kept them.

3 – Helenium ‘Sahin’s Early Flowerer’. From one plant bought in a plant fair, I now have several decent sized clumps of these. They divide so easily in the spring that it is rude not to. They are a stronger colour than the basic helenium autumnale, usually a rather plain yellow, of which I once had lots. I got bored with them and dug those up over the winter. These ones will flower through the summer, in this case lighting up a rather shady corner.

4 – Clematis ‘Polish Spirit’. Planted earlier this year it has grown fairly vigorously. It is growing up a bit of trellis, keeping company a moss rose ‘William Lobb’ which is also doing nicely. The flowers on the clematis are rather sparse this year, but it is early days. I am hopeful that next year it will more or less cover the trellis and be festooned.

5 – Lobelia ‘Fan Burgundy’. Our slimy friends have had an absolute field day here. All three of these plants have been munched back to a skeleton. I have been less vigilant than I ought to have been with my nightly patrols and with the wet weather the slugs and snails are doing very well. I doubt it will recover this year, we might see them again next year.

6 – Hollyhock. A returner from last year. Hollyhocks are often grown as a biennial here because of rust, to which they are a martyr. I find the rust usually mostly affects the lower leaves, and if one can surround with other plants, blushes are spared and they can be treated as a short lived perennial

Those are my Six, what are yours? If you’d like to have a go, just publish your post and pop a link to it in the comments below. If you also mention my blog in yours, that would be splendid. For more details you can read the brief participant guide.

Have a fabulous weekend, I hope you get some quality garden time. I didn’t get much of my list done last weekend, and I fear the same will be true this weekend. Oh well…

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