Six on Saturday (11 May 2019)

Typical. You take your first week of leave and it turns out to be mainly cold, wet and breezy only for the weather to improve just in time for your return back to work. Ah well. Despite the dodgy weather the scabious and dahlia seedlings were potted on, visits were made to establishments of the plant purveying kind, strolls were taken in the countryside and the odd tasty meal out was enjoyed. There were also travellings of the M5, M54 and the A-good-lord-not-another-roundabout-which lane-do-we-want-this-time-5 kind which leads me to my first SoS.

1. Last Saturday my wife and I travelled up to my Ancestral home in the North of Wales for a few days. I took up some pots of plants for my mum but inevitably came back to Somerset with far more.

An anonymous geranium, allegedly white though possibly pink (my mum doesn’t label things either), some stipa grass (pre-ordered a few months ago), a thyme, a primula candelabra, some rudbeckia and a sneaky fern which will join that other fern you can see in the background. I’m gradually creating a stealth fernery – just don’t tell my wife.

2. The hibiscus is still not showing any signs of life. To add insult to injury my mum’s hibiscus (a special from Aldi purchased a few years ago, no more than a foot or so high and growing up North where it’s decidedly chillier than down in the South West) has leaves. Leaves! I will release my pent up frustrations here as I’m trying to remain positive in front of the hibiscus, offering it encouragement and support and providing it with a safe, non-judgemental, pressure-free environment in which to… well, do nothing while all the other plants in the garden just get on with it, doing their whole leafy-growy-flowery thing without any fuss. *Sighs* I must remain positive and patient.

3. I planted a mixed bag of ranunculus last Autumn.

Some are beginning to flower and rather nice they are too, if a little spindly. Here’s a white one.

This is a ruffly yellow one.

And here’s the bud of a pink one that’ll hopefully feature next week if the wind or a wood pigeon doesn’t flatten it before then.

4. Several years ago I bought a packet of iris (Dutch I think) that if memory serves me correct were supposed to be scented. They weren’t. They were originally grown in a pot but were later scattered around the garden. Most of the time they usually only produce one flower, which is a shame, but I prefer them to the bearded iris and the flowers last a while. They’ve slowly multiplied over the years. This is the first one to flower.

Some of the others aren’t far behind. This yellow one was in bud on Friday morning…

But by the evening, and despite of the rain, unfurlage had occurred…

5. Now I’ve not had much success with alliums in the past (they don’t like our heavy clay soil) but I decided to give them another go, adding a bit of gravel to the back bed to improve the drainage a little. The new batch of Purple Sensation are definitely looking more robust than previous efforts (though there are a few blind ones) and some are just beginning to open.

Yet I’ve been rather taken with this much smaller variety that haven’t received any special treatment and were just plonked wherever there was space.

So far they’ve all been white. Understated elegant beauty.

6. And finally… Remember the Dwarf Korean Lilac from last week, its buds poised, ready to burst open? Well the fragrant flowers have finally opened en masse.

It’s at times like this that I wish some plants would just go on flowering throughout the whole of the summer. I’ll just have to make the most of heady scent while it lasts.

And they were my Six on Saturday. For more Sixes on Saturday, from all around the world, take a look at the site of the chap who started it all over at https://thepropagatorblog.wordpress.com.