Happy New Six on Saturday to you all. What is Six on Saturday you ask? Can I believe my ears? Where have you been for the last century, Mars? I suggest you take your rocket ship over to Mr P’s planet, our commandant’s home, and it will all become clear. Let us proceed.
Earlier in the week we were visited by the feisty storm Eleanor*. A sleepless night left us feeling a little battered the next day. The windows are streaked with brine, the recycling is in Somerset and plants are looking slightly stunned. This morning I smiled when I noticed a desiccated hydrangea bloom dangling from the telephone wire outside our bedroom window. Today it has been sliding one way, then the other, like a floral tightrope walker.
A couple of weeks ago I was kindly given a coreopsis by one of my esteemed clients. It was an unwanted gift. Not for me, you must understand, for them. It was very welcome for me. During the recent skirmishes it was somehow robbed of its pot, which has not been found, and left embarrassingly naked from the waist down. My dysfunctional gardener solution was to bung it in this oversized pot until I get around to sorting it. Is that sirens I can hear?
Apparently there is an awful lot of coffee in Brazil. There is good reason. It is warm and the sun shines. There is just one coffee plant in my back garden and it is looking a little the worse for wear. It has been living in the house (quite rightly) but was sent outside to sit on the naughty step as it had an aphid infestation. Then we (yes “we” ) forgot to bring it back in again when it got on the nippy side and a tad breezy. Silver lining – there is no sign of white fly.
That has got the weather stuff out of my system. Let us move onto something else. Oh yes, some agapanthus seed heads. I love seed, a little too much perhaps. But so does our leader The Propagator, and a mention will keep him happy.
My other half loves spider plants. I don’t. As we live in a democracy (at the moment) I concede to this adoration. It could be much worse. So he keeps on propagating them, rather they keep propagating themselves and he pots them on. Or divides them. Many moons ago he read how they clean the air or some such nonsense (unfortunately for me, possibly true nonsense). There is now at least one in every room of the house. I took one off his hands and planted it outside. It will die, I hoped. It hasn’t. It just looks even uglier. Surrounded by weed and manky apples precisely sums up my feelings. Yuk.
What a gloomy selection of photos, not to mention the doomy text. That is not the way to start the new year. I will finish with a picture to raise the spirits a little; crocus and Jetfire daffodils emerging through the violas. Not long ’til spring, but until then, let us enjoy what we have.
Thanks Lord Propagator for emotionally blackmailing me yet again into submitting my SoS, and of course for hosting the meme (yes I said meme again). Fingers crossed for next week!
* I have generally found that whenever I moan or gripe about my life, indulge myself in self pity, things are inadvertently brought to my attention to put me to shame. And quite rightly so. If I am feeling ill, I read about someone far poorlier than I am hopping up Kilimanjaro with a smile on their face. If I am feeling hard done by, I hear of some underprivileged soul doing kindnesses to those more fortunate than themselves. And if the weather is getting me down, I am shocked by TV clips of blizzards and droughts and floods and general devastation the experience of which is far from mine. Therefore please bear in mind that I am fully aware of the pathetic nature of any weather system that might befall us here in the UK and our embarrassing inability to cope with it. It was a pretty windy though.
I do like a good seed head. I am indeed happy
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And therefore so am I
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Thanks for sharing. I’m with you- I really dislike spider plants! Thanks for sharing the pics of your daffodils and crocus. Spring is on the way!
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Phew, I was worried the Spider Plant Appreciation Society would be knocking on my door! Seems I am not alone. Thanks 🙂
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Ooh! You are so lucky. Your OH is always thinking of you. Chlorophytum (look it up) has aphrodisiac qualities, didn’t you know?
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Have you ever heard of “too much of a good thing” 😉
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Oh wow! Yours are more fun than mine. I will need to put more effort into it next time. When I lived in town, the neighbors behind me had a redwood hedge directly below the utility easement. It got short for clearance annually, but sometimes got close enough to get zapped. I could sometimes hear it doing so while sitting at my writing table on a breezy day. One day, I heard an unusually lout ‘ZAP!’. I looked outside to see an smoking squirrel, and I do not mean he had a cigar. His little hand was still gripping the cable. To make it worse, he stayed there for days, and would ‘zap’ as the breeze blew him back and forth to brush up against the stem that he had less than successfully jumped from.
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Poor squirrel! A redwood hedge sounds amazing though, I love redwoods. Must take some serious pruning though. Really good to read you SoS. 🙂
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Redwoods actually make descent hedges, and were popular as hedges during the Victorian period before better hedges were imported. they work like hemlock hedges. Our hedge was really just trees with the tops cut off. It was rather informal, but effective at obscuring the view of my two story apartment building from the backyard of the home to the east.
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Granted it is a lousy time of yer to get pretty pictures of plants. But they will get better soon I hope.
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Won’t be long before there is light!
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The hydrangea blossom takes the cake. After laughing out loud over that photo, I scrolled down to continue laughing at the poor coreopsis’ solution & your maligning of the spider plant . . . & thought, here’s someone who gardens like I do (minus the sky born hydrangea). Does a coffee plant smell like its beans or simply green? As to The Propagator’s seed lust, you do know he’s got fondling them on his to-do list this week. Anyway, great Six.
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I have never smelt anything coffee-like at all! Glad I made you laugh and thanks. As for The Prop, I am beginning to worry ……
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I can handle it. I can stop whenever I want. Sniff. I can handle it. Got any seeds? Just a few. Come on. Just a few. What? It’s fine. I can handle it. Really. I just need a few seeds in the morning. To keep me going, you know.
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Just walk away from the catalogues, remember the tulips?
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Tulips? What tulips. No tulips here. What those thing poking up through the ground? Who put those there? Wasn’t me.
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It’s worse than I thought 😕
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Wibble wibble.
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Everybody has some, I’ve got detestable Brazilian Pepper over the powerline. On a happier note,the Leonitis came up!
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Yeah! That is good news. 🙂
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I know. We had a weird cold snap but they were in a protected area. Fingers crossed.
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Keep me posted!
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I will. What is interesting is they are doing well where they shouldn’t go! Not up where they should go. Typical
.plants.
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Keep us guessing, that is why we love them.
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Well since you are lollygagging about during winter storm ..Grayson? Here is the bed Blanchetiana Bromeliads Russelias. Beach Sunflower white frangipani in the background. The Leonitis is in front of the Blanchetianas. Mad hot color gardening.
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In my enthusiasm about the frost this morning I had forgotten all about Storm Eleanor – it was very windy.
And now I know how to get rid of the whitefly in my greenhouse – just put all the plants outside for a bit, but not if it is going to get very cold at night.
AND, I don’t like spider plants much, either!!
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Horrah, another one for the anti-spider plant league! There is a fine line between dead aphid and dead plants. Quite exciting really. 🙂
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You’re back! You’re really back. I smiled my way through your post, and l surely did need to put a smile on my face. We have a leak, the wall is all wrinkled and wet, and no one can figure out where the leak is or how to fix it. 😡 Of course, there are many people with worse problems, but still…
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I can completely sympathise! We also have a leak that 3 builders have “fixed” and it is as bad as ever. So it is not only the weather we have in common!
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Oh, dear. It’s probably the weather in common that leads to the leaks in common.
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I think you might be right!
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I don’t know about this seed addiction, you will be telling me you pay good money for them next! I grow my own for nothing (smug smile) although I did have to buy the original plant? If I become desperate I use the same dealer as Mr P, they only go by their initials HPS.
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