Greetings fellow Sixers. I actually got a couple of hours gardening done last weekend, beginning to tackle the backlog of jobs that has built up over the last few months. Plants were pruned, cut back, chopped up per the demands of the season. I still have loads to do, including most of the clematis and all of the climbing roses. Might get around to that this weekend, we’ll see! in the meantime it’s time for Six on Saturday. Six things, in the garden, on a Saturday. Could be anything. A flower, a fruit, a harvest, a pest, a success, a failure, anything at all. Join in!

Here are my Six…

1 – Hellebore foetidus, stinking hellebore. Only stinky when crushed, I gather. I’ve no idea where this plant came from. I’m nearly certain I didn’t buy it or grow it myself, so it’s a blow-in of some kind. In time it forms a decent clump and can have quite an impressive set of blooms at a time when very little else is flowering. This one just has the one flower stem at the moment. With it being green about the gills, I almost missed it as I was stalking the garden for SoS fodder.

2 – Clematis tangutica ‘Bill Mackenzie’. Wow but Bill is an ANIMAL, growing 15 or 20 feet last year, well up in to a nearby tree. He’s certainly too much for the 6′ fence I’m growing him against. Last Sunday I did a bit of gardening out front, much of which was spent wrestling with Bill. I prevailed eventually, but had to stuff him in the bin, with a pile of his prunings still left on the drive. Bill is now neatly trimmed to about 18 inches and ready to go again. I find clematis to be a fickle bunch, but when they are happy, they are REALLY happy.

3 – Daffodil ‘Peach Cobbler’. Some of last year’s new daffs returning for a second show. You’ll be glad to know that I got the last 50 daffodils planted in the front garden. Every year I tell myself I hate it so much (planting them) that I will buy much less next time. Inevitably that goes out the window once the bulb catalogues come out in July.

4 – Helenium ‘Sahins Early Flowerer’. I have a few clumps of this now, all from one original plant. It is very easy to divide and I will do more of that in a month or two. That little group on the right hand side will probably yield 10 or 15 plantlets. I grow them on for a few months then plant them out.

5 – Hydrangea ‘Annabel’. I was trying to get a picture of the new buds I can see on this, but they wouldn’t hold still for long enough to focus on them. Trust me, they’re there. I’ll leave last year’s blooms on until March, say, when the risk of severe frost has diminished.

6 – Malus, buds. Talking of buds, I was beginning to think this tree wasn’t going to thrive, perhaps even dying, since it produced only a few withered fruit. Perhaps it just had stage fright, it’s first season in my garden. We hope for better things this year, we shall see. The process has begun well enough, there are buds for new growth.

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 great. For more details you can read the brief participant guide.

Have a super weekend, perhaps you’ll get the chance to do some gardening, weather permitting.

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