Blooms, Buds, & a Buddy

Six on Saturday is a weekly diary hosted by The Propagator & contributed to by gardeners all over the world.  For links to other SoSers, check out Mr P's blog & the Twitter hashtag, #SixOnSaturday.

It's Saturday, it's sunny, the outside beckons.

So without more fuss, let's do this thang.

1.  Pellie blooms.

Pot mates Lord Bute & Aztec are both blooming.

One of Aztec's blooms looks like the veins of colour have seeped into the white.

And a close up of Bute who is equally stunning.

Both pellies have a lot of buds on them, so this show could go on for a while.

2.  Gill's pot.

Two years ago, Gill Heaven, our Off The Edge gardener, sent me some miscanthus seeds.  That year, I couldn't get them to germinate.

This year, no miscanthus seedlings either, but an ivy-leaf toadflax did appear in one of the cells.  When it bloomed, it earned a pot of its own, now called Gill's pot.

3.  Rhododendron Scarlet Wonder.

Way back in January while suffering an incapacitating case of rhodo envy, I discovered the first ever bud on my young Scarlet Wonder.  It has 10 now, one of which started its grand opening this week.

That scarlet is a wonder, indeed.

4.  Fuchsia redux.

Last week, I mentioned some dead sticks that'd once been a lovely fuchsia.  I lifted it for a gardening friend who got ill, so I replanted it, after which all the leaves dropped off.

This week, it returned to us.

5.  Tamarix.

In March, I paid £1.79 for some other dead sticks that were magically going to become a Tamarix.

Proof of life here as well.

6.  Garden buddy.

With no hose attachment during April's dry spell, the water level fell in the Doodle pool, exposing more of the bamboo life raft.  Birds began to prefer the pool to the bee water bowls set around the garden, perhaps feeling safer off the ground & having more plant cover.  The segmented bamboo also provided a nice little bath tub.

If you look closely, you can see a blackbird perched on the pool rim above the bamboo.  Just before this photos was taken, he'd been bathing in the section of bamboo below the bright yellow Creeping Jenny.  Unfortunately I wasn't quick enough to snap him in the act, but he was having a wailing good time.

The proper hose connector finally arrived & we've filled the pool high enough to cover the plant baskets, but low enough that the birds'll continue to bathe there.

That's me done for this week.  Thanks for dropping by!  Hope to see you again real soon.