Six things in the garden on this wet Saturday

 As I sat in the conservatory this morning, peering through onto a sodden garden, I really thought it would be probably best to skip a week, but habits die hard, and thinking over this week, it would be a shame not to mark some of the highlights.  For different gardening things or maybe even similar ones  and inspiration all the other SOSers will have gathered in Jim's Shed better known as his anchoring post, to share discuss and comment on our Sixes in the Garden. Anyone is free to pop over there. 

1. I'm starting off this week with acknowledging that I succumbed to a little self gratification last Saturday, or perhaps more nicely put: I found four beautiful polyanthus, two of which are the gold laced type to help chase the grey clouds away. 

I felt happier but the grey skies haven't gone away.  Staging them on the shed shelf meant finding four terracotta pots of the same size.  Since I promised Mr S that I would not buy any more pots, with my fingers crossed behind my back, and to keep to this, meant that some plants needed repotting in other containers first.  Of course it was time for some Pelargoniums to be freshly potted up etc, and I had the satisfaction of having a nice display and getting one of the gardening tasks on my list ticked off. It is not that I am 'forbidden' to buy pots or indeed anything I want for the garden, it is just that he indoors worries about me moving large pots around, or that I may start to trip over the stash or end up head first unbalanced in the bins that store the pots.

2, The little Primula Wanda White is in its third year in the garden, and continues to be a healthy strong and extremely good flowerer, opening its first blooms just before Christmas.  It is compact and holds its blooms close to the bright green leaves.  Even the small divisions made late last year are thriving, these two were made the year before that.

3. Another excellent plant that thrives in this garden, this time along the shady border is the Saxifraga stolonifera. Its pattern leaves make a good front of the border statement.

4. Each Spring the young growth on Sorbaria sorbifolia 'Sem' certainly adds  an interesting evolving coloured foliage. It is still growing in a pot, but had a change of soil a year ago.

5. The standard purple Primula Wanda is starting to make a good display, but this little group really ought to have been divided and replanted last autumn.  I have a spot earmarked to take them next.  Just as some people enjoy moving their 'knickknacks' or furniture around the house, I do the same with certain plants in the garden.  I find I can inspect the roots, give them a little more space or arrange them against different plants which gives a nice different view of the same small spaces.

6.  The cyclamen continue to be the stars on the near side of the conservatory border and standing out this week amongst a range of colours is Cyclamen coum 'Tilebarn Elizabeth'.  With no patterning on its pewter leaves, her charmingly pale pink flowers have with a deeper basal blotch, and each petal is delicately edged in a deeper rose pink giving its flowers  a vibrancy within the larger patch of cyclamen coum blooms.  I ought to mark this and try to collect some seed during the summer.  In previous years the seed pods just seemed to disappear.

I still haven't planted any seed, it has been too cold, and we even had a heavy shower of snow during the week, but it melted within minutes.