Six on Saturday (21 May 2022)

It’s been a week of sunshine and showers, perfect growing conditions for plants, especially the front lawn which received a quick trim yesterday evening. I know, I know. It’s no mow May, and I had considered joining in. But it doesn’t really work in a small garden with a small patch of grass that sees heavy footfall, especially when you only have a hand-push rotary mower that doesn’t cope very well with the green stuff when it’s more than a few inches long. However, the public green opposite the house is a riot of tall swaying grasses, buttercups, dandelions and red clover aplenty, providing nectar for winged wildlife of the six-legged buzzy kind, and I have a feeling the starlings and blackbirds appreciate the shorter grass when it comes to searching for leatherjackets and worms. Besides, there’s still plenty of nectar to be found in a garden with a short and patchy lawn, and that leads me to my first Six on Saturday…

1. Foxgloves. The majority of the foxgloves in the garden are self-seeded and get moved to more sensible positions early in spring… if I remember. They’re mostly pink, although a white variety has reappeared this year. I got a bit of a fright the other afternoon when I was photographing the speckled insides of one of their bell-like flowers and found myself nose to fangs with a white crab spider.

2. Another week, another Dutch Iris. A purple one this time.

3. Now this was a pleasant surprise. Several years ago my mum gave me an orange perennial wallflower. It lasted a few years and then vanished, but thankfully it left behind offspring. I must remember to collect the seed from this one when it goes over to try and make sure I always have some growing in the garden. Two ‘Apricot Twist’ perennial wallflower plants were purchased last month but I think I prefer the simpler one-tone orange of this lightly fragrant variety (possibly Siberian Wallflower).

4. A Philadelphus of short stature up next. ‘Manteau d’Hermine’ is a mass of double white blooms at the moment. The fragrance of Mock Orange always takes me right back to my childhood and a great big Philadelphus that grew in the front garden of our old house.

5. More orange, this time courtesy of Geum ‘Totally Tangerine.’ Another TT, much smaller than this one, is struggling for some reason, possibly overwhelmed by the foliage of the Bluebells.

6. And finally… Fabulously fragrant flowers (once you’ve managed to get down low enough to appreciated them) and a last minute substitution (apologies to a white perennial Cornflower that will hopefully still be flowering next week). Lily of the valley is one those plants that is rather hidden away in the garden and tends to get forgotten, lost beneath fading Forget-me-nots. I think I may need to plant a few more.

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.

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