Six on Saturday - 7 December 2024

 From the garden Six things posted to meet up with others led by Jim over on the his blog called Garden Ruminations.  

As I do my first draft on Friday evening, on my phone comes a very official severe weather warning regarding Storm Darragh. It was a little strange. Will the warning prove to have been over the top? As I post this Saturday morning before breakfast and having been awake since two I can confirm that for this area it was not over the top.

I would rather have nature's warning via the beauty of morning sunrises as spied from the back window yesterday. But then not everyone would have seen the wonderful sky or understood its significance.

After breakfast yesterday, I went out and moved certain pots to avoid any breaks, parked buckets and empty pots in the shed etc., and generally rather enjoyed a couple of hours pootling around the garden.  In the beds, several of the early spring bulbs are coming up, and getting down on hands and knees, and removing some of the ground cover plants that have encroached a little too far and to find even more shoots were piercing through in places, where I had forgotten I had planted bulbs, was a such a joy. This end of year season where almost everything on the surface has finished and there are evergreens to admire, the anticipation for the spring fills me with a calmness which is quite surprising.   

Let us get on with Six things from the garden, before I get the Red Warning from the boss Jim, who gives us bloggers quite a leeway regarding posting six things from our gardens :

1. Covered in dew this self seeded poppy, is just pretty enough not to be rooted out.  I can't even recall its name, but I am hoping someone may identify it.  It is probably the Welsh sort.

2. When I cut anything down or prune any plants, I look on it as an opportunity to use the woody bits around the garden.  Sometimes they come in very handy as plant supports. 

Instead of using string which can end up rotting all too soon, I use copper wire which Mr S stripped for me from some redundant electric wires he would have sent to the tip.  I use them as ties and also to form a lattice which the plants are very happy to wind through.  When it is time to discarding the framework, the wire is easily recovered wound back up ready to use again.  

3.  A little flash of colour is most welcome, and so this Primula auricula 'Old Cottage Blue' in its pot is now on the shed shelf. I have such a soft spot for auriculas and it is possible to grow them even in a small garden with little protection.

Primula auricula 'Old Cottage Blue'

4. When it comes to winter ground cover the silver leaves of Cyclamen hederifolium take some beating, and being so close to the ground they can take any amount of wind.

Cyclamen hederifolium

5.  The Willow is late to turn but is now finally starting to drop its leaves, and by the time it has been subjected to winds even in this sheltered corner, the wind will probably have striped it bare.

Salix matsudana 'Tortuosa' 

6. Pittosporum Tom Thumb being rounded and just below a metre high is bound to survive the winds unlike the tall Pittosporum I cut down last week.

Pittosporum Tom Thumb