Six on Saturday - 3 October 2020

 With all the rain and winds, and things I have had to deal with, I wasn't in the mood to post, until this morning. Two weeks is a long time, and I may just miss the chance if I wait till next week to post about two of the favourite plants of the moment: see 3 amd 6 below.  Anyway I think the Prop likes us all to turn up and share....

(1) Compost bin:  Please, don't say that you are surprised that I have only just got a bin this year, that it is terrible that it is plastic, and how just having one will mean than I cannot turn it.  I've had good wooden ones, when I made the most amazing compost during my allotment years, when keeping three to five chickens meant that the compost I made was superb.  Later I had a wormery, which for ten years or so was fun and interesting. 

Now I just marvel at how I can keep topping it up, and it just sinks, how warm it is, and just maybe I shall have something worth spreading around, or come to the worst, put in a trench over which to plant a few courgette or such like plants next year.

(2) Also down the amazingly narrow side.  I should say that I am grateful for a garden, but just how narrow can strips left by planners be? 

 It is just wide enough to get the compost bin in, and to dump pots, potting compost etc.  Mr S has been threatening to cut back all the ivy and swathes of white Solanum laxum 'Album'.  As the garden is sloping and the floor of the conservatory is a couple of feet up, with net curtains on that side, you can't see the debris.  However I ought to do something about it. The trouble is you never know when you might need a pot!

(3)  Jim will recognise this one: Persicaria runcinata Needhams form

It is a dwarf alpine species brought back from Nepal by plant explorer, Edward Needham. Its red stems fan out, with the cut leaves and small pink flowers. If I was scrabbling in the Himalayas in the rain, I too would have been charmed and would have wanted to bring this back to try in my garden.  Thankfully when I saw this on Jim's SOS, he kindly sent me some seed.  It has not taken long to grown the seed on and have a delightful ground cover new to me.

(4) What is the use of saucers under pots? Very heavy rainfall is not a fun time to go and empty sauces, remove them, or move the plants to shelter....

The Aeonium was moved out of the rain, its saucer emptied at about 10 pm, and this morning it is brimming over again.  It was rather pleasant roving around in the garden, in lovely fresh air, in the dark.  For once I slept well....

Many of the succulents have been moved to the shelter from the rain, forming a display by the front door.

(5)  I've discovered a fine resource looking up details Scabiosa columbaria: Cambridge University Botanic Garden.  It details the shapes of the leaves both in basal leaves:  "pinnatifid basal leaves".

and the shapes of the leaves further up the flowering stems: "pinnatisect stem leaves, the upper of which are finely divided" 

I was perplexed when reading the description on this plant where its leaves were simply described as finely divided.  Yes the leaves on the flowering stems are but not on the basal leaves.

"Rosettes of finely cut foliage push up tall wiry, richly-branched stems topped with a multitude of small 15-25mm light yellow pin-cushion like flowers with short pale yellow ray florets." is indeed misleading!

(6) Serratula tinctoria seoanei, bought at the Rare Plant Fair September 2019, is just coming into flower.  It is quite in the wrong place at the foot of a silver leaved Phlomis purpurea Matagallo.  It is really quite a small and dainty plant.

I shall have to consider where I move this one to, so that its very own special position as its flowers are just so perfect and demand a close look.