Six on Saturday – Downhill

Posted byofftheedgegardeningPosted inChez NousTags:, , , , , ,

Well it seems that is it.  The solstice has passed and we are now on the slippery slope to winter.   Passed in a jiffy didn’t it?   Here is my midsummer Six on Saturday.  And perversely it actually looks like a summer’s day out there.   It is where I should be, not here at my desk.   As my heart is elsewhere, to be on the safe side, we should proceed with great haste.  I’m sure our mentor The Prop is not sitting at his computer wasting sunlight hours thinking of things to say to his flock.  He will be prepared and have done all this silly writing stuff ages ago and at this very moment be hard at work in his garden.  Not me.  Not organised at all.  If we get on I might be able to steal a few moments of pottering later.

Here we are, my first photo, Simon the poppy.   Simon was trampled on by steel toe-capped builders and scaffolders until I pointed him out in the nicest possible way and asked them to try their very bestest to avoid stomping on his head again.  They did their best and here he is blooming well to tell the tale.  I do love a good red poppy and Simon is one of the best.

In my little garden I don’t have the benefit of potting shed or proper greenhouse.  When I do any potting up, pricking out or some such fiddlings, I sit on the bottom step of the set towards the top of the garden with my compost, pots and the “to be sorted” arranged about me.  I then settle down with a nice cup of coffee, which in matter of moments has compost floating on the top, and enter my own little world.   It was then that I noticed this chap on a Salvia elegans, possibly the diddiest grasshopper in the world.  Splendid antennae though.

Next Allium aflatunense ‘Purple Sensation’ which isn’t in the slightest bit sensational.    Perhaps it has a good excuse in failing to reach more than 20cm high.   They were planted late, they have been stood on (see above) and dug up by mistake (hangs head in shame).   Next year they will be wonderful, I can feel it in my bones.

A lovely surprise yesterday was to find that Peggy was flowering, albeit in a rather dishevelled way.  Like pancakes, the first dahlia flower is always a little bit dubious.

Next we have a horrid invasive geranium, it annoys me constantly by its continual march across the garden, swamping and strangling all that it passes.  Then the sun catches the veined indigo flowers and I am once more smitten.

Lastly the disgraceful sight of Big Ted after a night out on the tiles.   He has been severely reprimanded and is on house arrest for the foreseeable future.

All done, now let me out into the garden ……….

 

33 thoughts on “Six on Saturday – Downhill”

  1. I have, or had, my hardy geraniums in containers. I threw two of them out yesterday, what ugly plants when the flowers die back!
    What you have on your salvia is a katydid. They have long antennae, grasshoppers don’t. I only know that because I had a katydid nymph on a flower and looked up information on them!

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  2. Well I ought to comment, if only so people know I’m still alive! Priorities, you know. 168 plants planted yesterday, 86 today. Got to get on with it cos someone who said they were coming to help didn’t show up! I’m not (honestly not not!) jealous of Peggy. I suppose it’s understandable that she will flower for you rather than for some old git whom she’s never met. I can but dream of what might have been.

    Gotta disagree with Lisa, tho. Our UK grasshoppers do have long antennae, generally as long as their body but sometimes longer. It is also a little appreciated fact that their heads are at the front end of their bodies and contain their brains and their five eyes. Yep, that’s five! D’ya know that they use their antennae not only to touch but to smell? 🙂

    God, I’m so educational! 😉

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  5. Laughed out loud about the first dahlia/pancake- so true and such a satisfying analogy. Also poor Ted. How could you let him go out unsupervised? If only my Geranium had invaded, but it didn’t. It died in the summer heat despite being under its own parasol. (Not really, just a piece of tatty cloth, perhaps that was the problem)

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    1. I blame the deliquent Teds next door, they must have led him astray. 😀 There is little hope of our geraniums suffering from excessive heat, raining again at the moment, I am sure I can hear the slugs and snails marching …….

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  7. So good to hear Simon was resilient. Strange but true I’ve sprinkled many a poppy seed but never had any poppies. I even bought poppies last year but not a single one self seeded! I will enjoy them vicariously!

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  8. Hurrah for Simon! I was looking at the first of my flowering dahlias and thinking the same as you. They definitely get better as time goes on.

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  11. A couple of my teenagers were in a similar state to ted at the weekend. Scandalous. I whipped off the first dahlia flowers, a display of willpower, then the plant got munched by slugs and now I wonder if it will ever flower. I like dahlias but they are a devil for the slugs. Might not bother next year. Yeah, right…!

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  12. Not sensational? I am considering trying alliums this autumn, since there are not many options for bulbs that will naturalize in our mild climate. I do not find them to be as interesting as tulips and other spring and summer bulbs, but I would be pleased if they were more perennial. I sort of like ‘Mount Everest’, but am not decided on a cultivar. I just know that I am none too keen on the really big and garish sorts like ‘Gladiator’. So many other have written about them. Anyway, I do not mean to go on about that. Your other trampled, disheveled and horridly invasive flowers are splendid! Big Ted is . . . interesting.

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  13. Your geranium looks like my G.Magnificum – lovely colour, but the flowers don’t last long. Mine can’t spread easily as it hasn’t got anywhere to go!

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  14. That allium’s name is hysterical – he should be kept in the garden for that alone. I’ve been dithering about having geranium in my front garden, hesitating for just the reason you stated. However, I know you’re very good at persuading me to buy more plants, so are they all invasive or are some more mild mannered? Lastly, I’m sorry I didn’t make sure Big Ted got himself inside when we went out on the town, but I was a few sheets to the wind myself. Hope he recovers.

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      1. Partial shade – a little sun in the morning but there be trees. I just discovered Beth Chatto’s geranium collection & need to ring my Plantaholic Anonymous sponsor!

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