Colour Over Content

Six on Saturday is a weekly update from gardeners all over the world, hosted by The Propagator

We've got a friend's young dog visiting us for a few days & it's non-stop entertainment, watching him with Mlle DoodleFace.  I'm exhausted in the most wonderful way.

There's plenty of updates in the garden this week, but I've energy for only a few words & several photos.

Enjoy.






1.  Pumpkin in a hammock.

2.  Good year for glads.

3.  Self seeded cosmos.

4.  Not a dierama.

5.  Canna thru salvia leaves.

6.  Castor & tithonia, best mates.

Thanks for dropping by.  Hope to chat again real soon.

Now back to supervising the chaos.

5 Hurrays & A Big BooHissBoo

Six on Saturday is a weekly get together of gardeners all over the world.  Be sure to drop by The Propagator for links & guidelines.

Not sure when it happened, but I've gone from wondering if my mid-winter gardening plans were madness, to seeing the results.

There'll be tweaking next year (who knew tithonia was such a brute?  What, everyone?  Really?)  Even so, most of the plants have done a mighty fine job.

But there's always that one.




1.  Sweet corn.

Last year was the first time I bought corn plants rather than start from seed.  About a third of the plants died early on, so there was a scramble to replace them, in order to maintain their block planting.  The replacements never caught up, & produced poorly.  Despite that & a drought year, we had some cracking cobs.  Nothing like fresh sweet corn.

Ever the optimist, I bought plants again this year, ordering a double batch just in case some died.  They arrived a month later than promised, which meant the companion pumpkin plants were well ahead of them.  I figured this could be managed w/trimming a pumpkin leaf here & there.

Within a week, all but 9 of 44 plants died.

I always hand pollinate corn just to give things a boost, so 9 stalks is better'n none.  We're now down to 6, but we've got tassles!

Unfortunately, none of the stalks have silk. There'll be no corn this year.  Next year, I'm going back to seed.


2.  Maters.

On a happier note, we've got maters - 6 different types courtesy of a seed kit given to me for Christmas.  I'm the only one here who eats them, but last year I fell so hard for the rosella cherry tomatoes, the non-mater-eating gift giver thought this would be a very good thing 6 times over.

We shall see.  These are Black Russians, which I've yet to taste.  They're a dark cherry tomato, so it's gonna be a while before I do.

In fact, the only ones ripe enough to eat are the rosellas, & they're just as good this year as last.

I've started pruning the new growth & flowers so we're not left w/a bunch of green tomatoes come the first frost.


3.  Pumpkins

The pumpkins've produced well, too, so they've been getting vines & flowers pruned.

Prompting one to make a break for it.


4.  Scottish flame flower.

After 5 years failing to propagate one of my own, I bought a tropaeolum speciosum this spring.  Once the heat came upon us, it looked poorly, so I moved its pot to the shady front garden.  It thrived so well, I decided to sink it.

So Flame Flower slides easily out of its pot, but before I can drop the empty pot & put my hand under its roots, a good third of the compost breaks off & takes an equal amount of root w/it.  I'd never seen anything like that in my life (which has been quite sheltered, I do admit).  I'd read they didn't like to be moved & now I know why. 

The corn-plant optimist in me figured w/2 thirds of its roots intact, I should still plant it.  It died completely back in a few days.  Optimism doesn't die as easily, so I left it where it was.

The phoenix rises.


5.  Saxifrage & orphan pot.

This saxifrage got left behind by a previous tenant, I don't know how many gardens ago.  I've never bought a hanging basket in my life, so this poor thing's been living here for all those long years.  It's been a good performer, knocking out a mass of pink flowers earlier in the year.  It used to cover all the soil but sadly, it's had enough of me taking it for granted.

Last year, one of my new pots didn't suit anything & so suffered the indignity of acting as a tray to carry small potted plants from A to B.

Now the 2 are happily brought together.


6.  Verbena hastata.

My name is Lora & I don't regret buying this plant.  Not one single bit.  But if there is blame, it's because Mr P featured his hastata several weeks ago.  In case I didn't take the bait, a few other SoSers've shown theirs as well.

These 3 photos are all of the same plant, but taken from different angles to show it w/flowers that provide a white complement, are in its own colour spectrum, or its opposite on the colour wheel.

Achillea Pearl, a few out of focus verbena bonareinsis, & some sedum buds (left background).

More bonareinsis, the same sedum, & a zinnia that promises hastata will look good w/the sedum when it blooms.

Achillea Pearl in the background, cousin bonareinsis, & calendula.  I adore this plant.

And that's me done talking.

Thanks so much for dropping by.  As always, I'd be tickled hastata pink to hear your comments.

See you next time!

From Last Week, Comes This.

It's Six On Saturday time - a weekly opportunity sponsored by The Propagator for gardeners to share our stuff & stick our noses into stuff from other gardens all over the world.

A few of my Sixes this week relate to last week.  Some relate to many weeks before.  That's a garden for you.

So let's do this thang.






1.  Wind damage.

Last week, I posted shots of the garden before the Big Wind.  There were no losses here from the storm, just battered petals & leaves.  However, after the storm, any light brush against the pale yellow sunflowers broke the side flowers off at the main stem.  Which meant they came inside.

Here's a close up of those beautiful faces.

I've never had sunflowers so intolerant of being touched.  As this is their first year w/me, I'm not sure if that fragility is a feature of the type or comes from the wind.  What says the SoS gang?


2.  Anemone & plum.

The anemones were one of the few flowers growing in the back garden when we moved here.  A few weeks ago, they started to open, one here, one there, but now they're a brilliantly white flash mob. 

The plum sustained some wind battering to its leaves, but the anemones were unscathed.


3.  The SoS Curse.

SoS-ers've introduced me to a lot of the plants now growing in my garden.  Last week, Jim Stephens featured a New Zealand fuchsia that I absolutely fell in love with.  In the process of researching & price comparing & trying to talk myself out of buying yet another plant, I found this.

On eBay, of all places.  Oregano Amethyst Falls.  Its flowers are similar to what hops produce, with pink blooms in chartreuse bracts.  Although ornamental, the leaves can be used in cooking.  The cooks in my house aren't going to be told that.

Now, about that fuchsia, eBay Guy has one of those, too.


4.  Speaking of hops (& brambles).

You might remember this past spring, I decided to embrace a bramble invasion from next door rather than tackle it in the moment.  Not only did said bramble grow uglier'n sin, but it produced no flowers.  Meanwhile, its parent plant waves over the top of the fence at us, flaunting scads of fruit, which the birds are pretty happy about.

Assuming the berries might grow on last year's growth (& not bothering to look it up), our bramble got a reprieve until next year, but very early on, I planted a hops next to it to cover the ugly.  I actually like the contrast between the 2 greens, so haven't a clue what'll happen if the bramble gives no fruit next year.


5.  Creeping Jenny.

Another weird idea plan from spring was to beautify the Doodle Pool.  I'd seen a photo of Creeping Jenny in a floating planter, Jenny creeping across the water.  I put a bit in the bamboo Bug & Crittur Life Raft & started hoping.

It's begun to head in the right direction.  If it gets there before first frost, I'll post a photo.

When I first saw this photo, I thought the little brown dot in the bulrushes was a flower bud, but it's a seed pod from some nearby tree.  Bummer.


6.  Baby Groot.

This little guy germinated in my hot press 6 years ago.  It lost arms to the Beast from the East, so subsequent new growth made me wildly happy.  I was still concerned that, for a 6 year old Monkey Puzzle, it was on the small side.

It wasn't due for a repot, but for whatever reason - probably because he looked sad & nothing to do w/recently watching Guardians of the Galaxy 2 - I decided to repot Groot this week.

Lo & behold, poor Groot's roots were in a 9cm biodegradable pot which hadn't degraded (like those below).  A selling point of the pots was that, in a few years, it'd be gone.  It didn't click in my brain that living in a 9cm pot for a 'few years' (6, in this case) was never going to work for a growing tree.

The pot walls'd thinned, so I was able to pry them off without damaging Groot.  Now his little toes're free.

This is the 2nd plant this year whose suffering originated below the surface, the first being the Crooked Cherry choked by a rogue valerian (both doing nicely since their separation).  I'm quite hesitant to go underground in my search for plant health, but I see that hesitation now as a mistake.  I also will never again sink a biodegradable pot.

And that's all she wrote - this fat lady has sung, so the show's over.

I really appreciate you stopping by & love when you leave a comment behind.

See you next time!

Before the Winds

Welcome to my little slice of Six On Saturday, hosted by the inimical Mr P.

Today, we're expecting winds to reach 50 mph, during which I won't be in the garden.

Here's Six things photographed before the winds come.






1.  Achillea

I've been featuring my achillea lucky dip collection as they've bloomed - first the whites, Pearl & Snowball, then Cerise, whose name says it all.  This week's achillea is yellow.

In addition to staggered blooming, they also vary in structure.  The whites lack the typical achillea foliage, stems lounging a good 24+" across the ground & other plants.  Both Cerise & my yellow (nameless) achillea have the familiar fernlike leaves seen in field yarrow, plus excellent posture.  Cerise is short & bushy, but the yellow achillea is 4 statuesque feet tall.

They weren't shipped with labels, so it's purely accidental that the yellow achillea got planted amongst the ricinus & cannas.  What the camera doesn't capture, is once you step back, the flowers look like floating glow orbs.


2.  Russian sage.

Another thing my camera doesn't properly show is how the light plays on the Russian sage.

I got this for its scent but am spellbound by its changeable appearance.


3.  A gift less cherished.

A few months ago, I pawned off graciously gave some of last year's dried chilli crop to the mother of one of my son's friends.  She, in turn, sent back an entire crate of garden produce which was most welcomed except for the beetroot.  I, myself, love beetroot, but none of the cooks in my house do, so it got passed in turn to a neighbour who scorned repaid my kind gesture by giving me begonias he'd grown from seed.

These aren't the old lady begonias mentioned last week that I've come to love.  No, no, these are the ugly as dirt who in their right mind would grow these hideous things begonias.  This is the same neighbour who tried to give me his reeking voodoo lilies, by the way.

I planted them & watered them & checked them for slugs, who apparently found them too repulsive to eat.  They're still ugly as dirt but they look healthy enough.  And my neighbour enjoys seeing them when he walks by.


4.  Green pukkin.

You  may remember that I'm growing white pumpkins for the first time this year.

The Halloween traditionalists are pleased that I found a baby orange pumpkin in the patch.


5.  Tithonia bud.

Me, though, I was tickled to find this in the garden.

'Find' is perhaps misleading.  I've camped beside the plant, refusing food until the first sight of colour.  (Cake isn't food, right?)  It looks like a little cat face, its whiskers painted on. 

It grows in a circular bed in the middle of the lawn, totally exposed.  Our last storm wasn't as severe as today's is supposed to be, & the tithonia weren't so tall.  Even so, they laid themselves down on the zinnias.  I made a sling out of old cloth to gentle encourage them upright.  Perhaps that'll keep them safe today.


6.  Salvia Amistad.

This salvia started the summer as a plug plant, elbowing its place amongst the ricinus, cannas, daisies, thalictrum & perhaps some other stuff as well.  You can see it in the 3rd achillea photo, poking up between the two yellow glow orbs.  (Yes, you can have too many plants.)

In other SoS gardens, Amistad bloomed & left, so it incited great joy in me over the last several days to see this . . .

. . . eventually became this.

The colour combo plus the geometrics of the buds all leave me feeling very calm.  A short lived calm followed by a tickle in my belly because the bloom looks like a cartoon sea gull screaming at someone who stole its chips.

There's my Six for the week.  God willing & the creeks don't rise, the wind might leave something for me to report on next time.


Thanks for dropping by.  Hope to see you again real soon.


Now, shoo w/you, off to visit Mr Propagator for more SoS blogs.

Blooms, Doodle, Pukkin.

Was it only a fortnight ago, we celebrated a new doctorate in monsters?  Seems ages.

Maybe cuz last week, it was all hands on deck saving plants from hellfire temps.  This week, we've a sick old dog, Mr BigNose.  Nothing life threatening but he gets us up several times during the night.

Still the garden grows.  The peas have finally failed.  The pumpkins are charging up the wall & across the lawn.  The water lilies have bloomed & bloomed again.

Then there's the alien life form that originally presented itself as a sunflower.


1.  Medusa.

This featured a few weeks ago when it still looked like a sunflower.  Since then, it's sprouted a headdress.

View from the back.

And a shot with Mlle DoodleFace to show how huge those leaves are!

Medusa's sister (to the right) is taller but hasn't started blooming yet.


2.  Calendula

These were part of an edible flower kit given to me for Christmas.  The kit also included nasturtium, dianthus, viola, corn flower (which featured a few weeks ago) & something else I can't remember that didn't germinate.

I threw the calendula seeds into a shallow grave on a bare patch & left them alone.  Here they are, blazing away, a few bits of verbena petals accenting their hair.


3.  Free petunias.

I've never cared for petunias but when these came as a free gift with a plant order, I dutifully planted them, fought off S&S hooligans, watered them on 35C days.

It was touch & go with the S&S brigade, but now the petunias're blooming their socks off.

Look at that sweet little face.  What's not to like?  No accounting for some people's taste.


4.  Begonia.

When I was a child, I considered begonias to be old lady flowers, like roses & coleus.

Now that I'm an old lady, I think they & all their old lady sisters are quite fine.


5.  Neon glad.

I got no new glads this year, but don't remember this from last year.  You'd think with a face like that, it'd be unforgettable.  I quite like it.

It showed up in the pot of the Black Swan beech in the right of the photo.  The Black Swan was given to me as a birthday pressie a few years ago, arriving at about 6' tall.  It lost 10-12" annually during its first 3 winters but has now settled down, content to be short & wide, like me.


6.  Pukkin.

The Halloween traditionalists were scandalised when I decided to grow white pumpkins this year & only calmed down after assurances that there were the usual orange ones planted as well.

I'm a bit concerned to have 2 of these darlins so close together, but we'll cope.  They're the most beautiful creamy yellow at the moment.  The traditionalists might just come around to my way of thinking about these beauties.

And there's my Six for the week.

Make sure you drop by The Propagator who hosts all us #SixOnSaturday bloggers in his comment section.

Thanks for dropping by.  Hope to see you again real soon.