Six on Saturday - End of August 2025

The hot dry weather has broken, and we have had a little rain, but nothing to penetrate the soil yet! Even when we have rain forecast it has something been no more than a sprinkling, then more sun but with some clouds. We are still taking every opportunity of being outside. Outside is the favourite place for gardeners except perhaps when they want to catch up with their fellows over at Jim's to share Six things on a Saturday. 

1. We were having coffee in the morning in the garden, when we spotted a number of pretty Small Copper Butterflies, yes that is the name of this butterfly,  with the favourite food source being the Asters. One with a large mound of flowers is Aster pyrenaeus 'Lutetia' and I wouldn't have time to count the number of bees and butterflies on it at any one time.

 

2.  I bought half a dozen of little Cosmos from the Bishop's Palace and planted them in a couple of different beds.  They have grown tall, well over a metre, and no flower!  Even in the sunniest beds they have behaved just like this one.  It does make quite a nice green bush, but I want flowers!  In fact it reminded me of the 'Burning Bush' Kochia scoparia which my in laws used to grow back in the seventies in their garden.  Such a blast from the past are those, and funnily I don't see them around these days. 

Tall Cosmos that refuses to flower

3. I sowed some Cosmos seed directly late, and transferred three seedlings to the same bed, and here is one of them feeling quite relieved that it is starting to rain. They were Dwarf Purple Picotee Cosmos from Thompson & Morgan.  

4. Just emerging through the Aster pyrenaeus 'Lutetia' is the Miscanthus nepalensis, or is it that the Aster has draped across  the Miscanthus's space?

 Miscanthus nepalensis

5. I have been battling the watering, and Mr S came up with something that will make it so much easier for me.  This is of course supplementary to the waterbutt when it has water in it and water collected as part of savings from indoors.  Firstly he fitter a small splitter to the outside tap so that I can keep the hose connected and am able to turn it on and off, without having to disconnect the timer and its various finer pipes that go to the larger outdoor pots.  I was finding rolling up the heavy hose a little too hard and now I have a new expanding snake hose. It is so much lighter and easy to coil up and hang.  The timer is now near the floor rather than coming out of the tap.  The whole thing will of course be put away for the winter.  

6. And why do you think I am showing my old but favourite pair of secateurs?  It is because after looking for them, they were lost for a whole 24 hours and then they were found. I felt full of thanks and rejoiced.  However this was not before I had emptied the shed, sorted out the tools, thrown out lots of old bits of string, and worn out gloves, etc, swept out and cleaned other tools, scoured the garden, and emptied the green bin.  I had resolved to allow a week to pass and then order or perhaps even visit the Kiwaki Show Room. This would be an excursion, what gardener doesn't love an excursion with perhaps a garden visit etc thrown in as well? 

 

It was not till I cycled into town, and locked up my bike, that I found the secateurs nestling right at the bottom of my panier.  It has been there for three or four days from when I had cycled out hunting for elberries to harvest from the hedgerows on the levels ready to make Elderberry Cordial. I don't normally phone home whilst I am out, but to save poor Mr S from continuing the hunt, I had to share my find and my joy.