Six on Saturday The first of July

Last week Jim. who is the anchor point for this weekly meme about six things in the garden, raised the topic of plants that are resilient to our  warmer and drier summers. Most of this week's post is devoted to this topic.

1.Tanacetum densum subs amani whose everyday name is 'Partridge Feathers'. so apt with its finely shaped leaves. 

Tanacetum densum subs amani 

It comes from hot dry rocky areas in southeastern Turkey and had been planted in the front garden.  As I wanted to see this a little more often and as it is on the edge of the road close to the area being driven over by cars and delivery vans as they clumsily reverse around the corner.  I moved it to the gravel garden in around April, and as the stems were raggedy also cut it right down.  As if a Turkish mountain goat had had a good meal, and thankfully it is right back, and apart for the water in when transplanted it hasn't any watering and very little rain until just a couple of days ago.

2. Also in the gravel garden just sneaking into the picture above is a little plant that I saw and bought as a 'souvenir' from Beth Chatto's garden.  It is Phyla nodiflora commonly called Turkey tangle frogfruit, a creeping vervain. The turkey and the partridge are be side by side. It dies back for the winter and seems to disappear for that season.

3. Another plant in the gravel garden that is resilient to the dry weather we have been having is the often featured Erodium Frans Delight. It has a very long period of flowering, and here is due to a session, where I sit down on my kneeling cushion and remove all the spent flower stems.

Erodium Frans Delight

A small plant taken as a cutting is growing quite happily without any watering over in a hard baked batch of clay to which I had mixed in some horticultural grit.

4. Over in the front 'Mediterranean Garden' is a plant that has the most wonderful shape.  Again a silver leaved plant: Ballota pseudodictamnus is a favourite on many levels. In front are some Sedum 'Purple Emperor', with Artemesia Powis Castle towards the back left hand side, and various low growing resilient plants such as the silver leaved Euphorbia myrsinites.  I have left it to hopefully self seed to increase the number of plants along the front garden, but this week the old flowering stems need to be cut back.

Ballota pseudodictamnus

During the week I and fellow gardening club members went to visit a member's garden, in Wells established only a few years ago.  Anthony and Maggie's garden facing south on a hill with wonderful views had again been planted with mainly mediterranean plants.  Their Ballota seemed to have a different shape to its stems, so a few cuttings were 'begged' and are now planted directly into the soil in the back garden.  Of course it may have been just different conditions that led to the variation in growth.  It will take a couple of years to tell.

5. Curving round the outside of the house out of sight of any of my windows the Mediterranean garden has other plants that have to survive without watering and this  Teucrium Hircanicum works well the adjacent silver leaved Centaurea 'Silver Feather'.

The exchange with Jim last week about which plants require less watering or non at all, enabled  me to look at the garden and consider the planting from an interesting angle. A few plants have been earmarked to increase, which some I am already starting to remove as they require watering just at the time when the waterbutt is empty.  Until this week we have had very little rain missing that which fell over on the top and to the north of the Mendips.  It is ironic that the pictures taken yesterday evening have rain drops on them, and maybe even on the camera lense. It was mainly very light rain and I am sure with just a day of sunshine it will be back to dry again, but we have a few showers and cooler temperatures forecasted. 

6. This week Jim is showing us his allotment, I have a small postage sized vegetable are, but I have also been a bit lackadaisical about my small veggie area this year. After seperate weeks of being away I hope to make the autumn more production, and have got on with a little sowing in my new tiny modules, one of which I raised a set of pansies which are already in the ground.  I am taking some tips from Charles Dowding who only lives a few miles away. 

Amongst these are lettuce, which I think will need resowing now the temps are a little cooler, as on the first day of their sowing it got a bit hot in there under their dome, as I had not yet put on the white fleece to reduce the sunlight and heat, but this morning I can just see evidence of the coriander seed.  The first lot is now in flower, over the next few days, I pick the green seeds and freeze these to add to the various spicy dishes and preserves I make.  This way they retain the fresh coriander leaf flavour. 

Coriander in flower

This morning and this evening will be slug and snail hunting season...taken on The Amelanchier tree in the front garden.

That is all this week, hopefully with less watering, more time can be spent on other garden activities.

 

Mad about Pineapples

One of my go to places for fruit and vegetables in this area is the bi-weekly Wells Fruit and Vegetables open up at Rocky Mountain Plant Nursery.

I haven't been for a few weeks, and this week as well as some excellent items in modest quantities, I picked up a whole box of large Pineapples.  Eight large ones for £2 the whole box.  The were ripe and needed to be processed the same day.  As I was nearly out of my favourite Pineapple Chutney, I knew that two would be used for that.  

Pineapples 

I have also frozen pineapple pieces, and will again be making roasted Pineapple with vanilla, ginger and rhum.  Over on Mad about Macaron  there is a recipe for this, and I am also using up a spare white of egg in the fridge to make some of her coconut macaroons to accompany the roasted Pineapple for Sunday Lunch.

Salads too with chilli, onion, green leaves etc works a wonder for lunch, and just a slice is really refreshing as a post dinner fruit.

Two further pineapples were peeled, and then given over to neighbours, with one person later saying that although out of the two of them, they didn't like pineapple much, they are now a convert.  Being asked about the country of origin and make, I went over how to choose a pineapple, having enjoyed pineapple since I was very little, you may well ask am I mad about pineapples?  

The skill in choosing just the right 🍍 taught to when I was little by my dad. Mum sent me up to the market on my own from about aged 10 to buy them. Always unpeeled, but I watched the men in the market peel them. If our cook was too busy, I would end up peeling them. Don't buy green pineapples, they are picked too immature, will never get sweeter.

Best Ginger Biscuits made in very little time.

 Yesterday I posted a picture of the ginger biscuits I made on Facebbok.  As Jill was called to collected her youngsters from Glastonbury, I sent a few of these for them to nibble on. I even had a message to say how much they enjoyed them. 

Here they are this time 'uncropped'.  The recipe is from Dan Lepard's Book which I have had since it was first published and has been a great inspiration to me, and even though from time to time I have had to adapt the recipe to suit the ingredients I had in the cupboard, I would highly recommend his book 'Short and Sweet', and on page 245 is the recipe for 'Spelt and ginger Cookies'.  He does not stipulate which type of spelt, and had I had it I would have used white spelt, but having only Wholemeal Spelt for my breadmaking, used that, and of course as usual I used goat's butter.

Since I found the recipe on line at Larder and Life, I let you explore it there, and hope you have a chance to make these. If you only have white wheat flour or other plain flour, please do still try them.  By the way another ruse of mine is to make my own 'stem ginger in syrup', the easy way that it.  I fill a pretty glass jar with the candied ginger I get from Grapetree, pour a little hot water and a good tablespoon Tate and Lyell's golden syrup, or you could use honey, and in a day or two the ginger will have plumped up beautifully, after turning the jar around a few times.  I use it like that for all sorts of dishes: on melon, in flapjacks, on seared pan-fried salmon etc.

In a Vase on Monday - Fading gracefully

 I love the way that words can mean slightly different things. Bearing in mind the effect of the strong sun, one can say that colours fade as the sun bleaches the colours, or in such situations a plant can react or be damaged by excessive light, as I found when I collected some seaweed just beyond the low tide and still in the water in Tresco. Sadly this is not a 'graceful' fading.

During the past summers I have found that the colour of the Rose Open Arms does differ depending on how much sunshine it receives.  On our return from another week by the coast this time overlooking The Isle of Wight, most of the roses were finished, so I decided to have a good trim back of Rose Open Arms but pushed some saved stems into a deep bucket of water in the utility area.  After our drive home on Thursday, and a couple of hours in the garden, it was only Friday when I plonked the stems in a vase for the kitchen. I do like the way real fresh flowers mature, wane and finally need discarding or can even be saved as dried flowers, so for this week, although I only have one type of flower in a vase, I would like to show how beautiful they are over several days.

Of course there is no sun bleaching if flowers are gathered in their early stage, at tight bud or just beyond. Using the meaning of fade to mean 'waning', or to go over, I pictured the arrangement each day and also the last one being this afternoon's view of Open Arms.

Having recovered, and feeling less frazzled on the Friday, yes we returned a day early, I removed the bucket flowers and was amazed that the tight buds had already opened, but it isn't surprising as the temperatures here were about 28C.

Still continuing with warm nights, the ones where one has a 0 tog duvet, which means we sleep under the duvet cover without any duvet in it. Here on day three, yesterday Sunday, the buds have open a little further but the colour has not been faded by this I mean bleached out by the strong sunlight.

And finally today,  a few petals are on the point of falling.  Though as it is clouded there is little effect of over bright light causing a bleaching effect on the eye of the lense. The colour does fade from the petals as the flowers wane, and tomorrow, this collection will go the same way as all the clippings made on Thursday.

With a little feed, and some watering in the absence of rain, the plant will bounce back, and reflower maybe two or three times further, and for all these reasons if a delightful plant to have in the garden.

I am sure there will be many beautiful flowers in the other arrangement, which us followers of Cathy enjoy sharing on Mondays. This is the link to her anchoring post, which is to be applauded after she and the golfer opened their garden yesterday. 

And finally our June Challenge for our online WI zoom photography group is 'Fill the Screen', and this cropped picture of Rosa Open Arms just fits the bill:

I just pray it rains at some time during the coming week. I hope it does......

P,S. The other picture I shall be submitting is this picture of some ginger biscuits I made this morning, for our WI Knit and Natter that met here earlier on, which is why I am little later than usual posting.

Six on Saturday Mid Year

 It still continues hot and dry, and we may have just had a good shower once whilst we were away this past week.  Next week the forecast shows no rain either, so out comes the fleece to cover young vulnerable plants whilst the sun is over them.

1. On our way back from a long walk on holiday by the sea, we happened to pass interesting gardens, and one had a 'sales' table in the front garden. Inspired by some beautiful Lampranthus whilst we were on Tresco, I picked up three plants each at £1.50. 

 

Combined with some beach combing finds, I emptied the long terracotta pot and have planted all three together together to check on their form and flowering potential. Overwintered later in this, it will also be handy to move into the shed if it get really cold in the winter.  I do have Lampranthus which has survived several winters in the front Mediterranean garden, but those have  much greener fleshier stems and leaves. The one that did not survive had been driven over by some delivery van so I do need to go out there and make a few more plants. For the summer they will add a colourful element along the road side.

2. Another plant bought at a table top sale is this pretty Dierama nodding in the breeze, with its very pale pink almost white  flowers held its long arching stems.  It is has a little pink marking inside.  It didn't flower last year.  In a week or so it will be floating above a sea of Oreganums in flower.

3. A couple of years back I planted an Achillea again no name, bought at a local charity plant sale.  It has silver leaves.  I have no idea of its name, nice one though. It is quite bleached here, but doing well considering it has not been watered.

4. Another orange: Rose Shine On, again not bad colour considering the bleaching effect of the sun.

Orange Rose Shine On.

5. Close by in the same hue is Alstromeria Indian Summer, growing in a large pot. 

6. I do like a curiosity or two and strangely this year the Linaria Canon Went has provided a certain fascination. all self seeded.  I leave the odd plant to give a little height, and since these can be dotted around, look rather pleasing.  I left this very fasciated flower spike as a curiosity. The causes can be various.

On another plant the fasciation is at the very apex of all the flower spike rather than all along the stem.

Again my garden was looked after by a kind neighbour over the last few days, but we are seriously considering a watering system for the pots and may a leaking hose for the veggies.  I wonder what other Sixers may have posted about their garden this week.  I have a treat as I have two weeks to catch up with.  All through the magic portal which Jim opens over on his 'Garden Ruminations Blog'.