Roses

Six on Saturday 3rd October

greengirlgardener15 Comments

I’ve been a bit remiss with keeping up with my blog. I was away last weekend so that’s my excuse. Anyway, here I am for a Six.

I’m going to start with a couple from our trip away. We went to Edinburgh for a few days for my birthday and we had a really great time (more of that on another post somewhen). I thought I’d come back with loads of planty photos because we’d planned a trip to the Botanic Gardens, but, as luck would have it, the day we’d planned that was the only day we had rain! Typical! We decided to do indoor things instead but we were fully booked every other day so had to take a literal rain check on the gardens. Good excuse to go back!

We came across this house in Prince’s Street gardens and I was taken with how pretty it is set in its lovely garden which was blooming with roses and lots of colour. I googled it to see if I could find out anything about the house and it’s the head gardener’s house but was also used in a BBC children’s programme.

On my birthday we’d booked a trip to Loch Ness which was absolutely brilliant. It was a long day, we met the tour at 8am and arrived back in Edinburgh at 8pm, but it was worth it. We stopped at several picturesque places on the way to Loch Ness and back.

Our tour driver was super knowledgeable about all things Scottish and he told us that there came a point when trees were dangerously low in numbers because there was no legislation in place to ensure replanting of trees after felling and it became a critical issue, so now for every tree that’s felled, another has to be planted. However, when this legislation was introduced, most of the trees that were planted weren’t native to Scotland meaning that now Scotland has more non-native trees than native. They were pretty impressive at this stop on our way back to Edinburgh.

This isn’t the best of photographs because I took it from a moving bus but you get the idea. We saw a few restaurants and shops whose entrances were entirely bedecked with beautiful flowers and plants, but this is the only picture I managed to snap. This is in the New Town part of Edinburgh where the architecture isn’t quite as lovely as it is in the Old Town, but the injection of colour really perks the buildings up.

Back home and the garden is in sore need of some tidying, but given the weather today and the upcoming forecast, it’s going to have to stay messy for a while! I have sunflowers which have flopped, wind battered runner beans and straggly pansies.

My ornamental kale is looking beautiful though.

This is hanging off the catio facing outwards in case furry friends nibble it, so we can’t see it unless we go out, but I’m happy just to know it’s there!

My fuchsias are still providing some much needed colour on these dreary days.

I feel that there hasn’t been enough fuchsia love on my blog this summer and I think it may be because they haven’t been as impressive this year, and I think that’s my fault. I must research fuchsia care so that they thrive next year. I have three and they all flowered, but they didn’t get many leaves and they didn’t get bushy like they were originally. Maybe some timely pruning is needed.

I may be slightly cheating with this last photo as it encompasses six in one! The photos may be multiple, but the point is singular.

And that point is, simply, colour! I took all these photos this morning before the rain started and it did make me happy to see all this colour after a week of dreary weather and the prospect of months of it to come.

That’s my Six for the week. As ever, the link to join in or just to read more Sixes is https://thepropagatorblog.wordpress.com/2020/10/03/six-on-saturday-03-10-2020/#respond

Six on Saturday 7th December

greengirlgardener9 Comments

I’ve been absent for a couple of weeks, and I’ve missed my creative blogging time. I’ve just had a lot on and haven’t found time to write. It also feels like I spend my whole life tired at this time of year so even when I have found myself with a few spare moments in which I could’ve shared what I’ve been up to, my brain’s been too sleepy to work!

I will try to find some time tomorrow to write a general catch up post of what’s been going on in the land of Green Girl Gardener over the past few weeks, although some of it I’ll have to tease you with because I have to keep some of my exciting news under my hat for now.

Anyway, enough of that and on to my first Six of December. It may also be the last of December – the impending festive season means a distinct lack of free time on Saturdays. We’ll see, maybe I’ll be able to squeeze one more in.

1. Hydrangeas

We have one Hydrangea in the back garden which was gifted to us by my in laws when we moved into our house. I finally planted it out at the end of Summer 2018 and it’s done well this year having more room to spread its roots.

However, when I checked it this morning …..

….. something has trampled it and broken off some of the faded flower heads. This, I think, is not good news. The old flowers protect the next year’s growth underneath so now I’m concerned that it might be damaged before the weather improves. Incidentally, please excuse the weeds – this area was almost inaccessible throughout the Summer because the Sweet Pea frame was in the way.

We have another Hydrangea in the front garden which I salvaged from a sale table this Summer, and it did really well and looked so pretty all Summer. I’m hoping it’ll get quite big and fill the corner of the garden.

I was really surprised to come out this morning and find some new growth on it.

I can’t remember what variety it is, but I’m sure it’s not supposed to bloom at Christmas!

2. Roses

We have lots! I love them!

This one is a patio Rose that’s in a pot on our bistro and it’s still valiantly trying to flower for me. There’s a teeny tiny spider currently making a home in its petals.

This one I think could be described as a mummified Rose! It’s my Rose Hot Chocolate which did really well this year. It’s become somewhat lanky so it needs a hard prune. I’ll have to check when to do it.

Finally, in the front we have beautiful Rose hips. This Rose was in the garden when we bought the house so I don’t know what variety it is, but it’s lovely.

3. Staying in the front garden, the Camellia has buds!

This also seems early. It flowers oh too briefly in very late Spring/early Summer and I’m always sad when the beautiful pink flowers turn brown and drop. I hope any potential cold snaps don’t ruin its chances of flowering next year.

4. Daffodils

Close inspection of the area in front of my birthday planter this morning revealed Daffodil shoots emerging. ALREADY! I’m sure they didn’t peek their heads into the world before Christmas last year. No sign of the Crocuses yet though. I wish I’d planted more Daffodil bulbs this Autumn. Last year I planted these ones in a row and whilst I loved their cheery yellow joy in the Spring, I think they’d have had more impact if I’d have planted them in clusters rather than a straight line.

5. There’s good news and bad news in the greenhouse. I always eat my sprout (singular!) first when eating my Christmas dinner so in a similar vein of getting the worst out of the way first I’ll show you the bad news first.

These were my cuttings, emphasis on the past tense! So disappointing. They were doing so well and now they’re really not! I don’t know what went wrong. Too cold? Too damp?

Anyway, sprout dealt with so on to the turkey and roasties.

The Fuchsias and Gazania seem to be coping ok with the cold. According to my thermometer, it’s been down to – 1.5° in the greenhouse. Let’s hope it doesn’t get any colder (for my sake as well as the plants!)

6. In case I don’t manage to squeeze another Six in before Christmas, I’m going to finish with Euphorbia ‘Rudolph’ for obvious reasons!

Unfortunately the reason for its seasonal moniker isn’t obvious during the festive season. You can just about see the pink tinge still but during the Summer it had bright red ‘noses’ just like Rudolph. This was from the sale table in Notcutts and I’m really pleased with how well it’s done.

I’m really late finishing this post this week (I started it at about half eleven this morning in the hairdresser’s) so if you pop over to the Propagator’s blog there’ll be plenty of other Sixes to catch up with in his comments. I’ll try to be back tomorrow with another post to make up for my extended absence.

Six on Saturday 16th November 2019

greengirlgardener6 Comments

Is it officially still Autumn? It doesn’t feel like it (especially not as I have a man in my porch fitting a smart meter meaning the gas is turned off hence no heating!) It’s soul destroyingly Wintery.

Anyway, I went wandering in the garden this morning to snap some pics for a Six and the sign in my greenhouse seemed very apt.

I think I’ll start in the greenhouse for number one. It’s chilly in there as is corroborated by both my posh and accurate thermometer …

… and my pretty but slightly less trustworthy thermometer.

The cuttings are having a very similar reaction to the cold as I am – a bit lacklustre and definitely not as happy as a couple of weeks ago!

A fellow blogger advised me a few weeks ago to keep them fairly dry but not bone dry, but, despite not having watered them for well over a month they’re just not drying out at all! I need a heated greenhouse, but that would send the new smart meter into spasms of panic I fear!

Conversely, the Gazania and the two Fuchsias (one hardy, one not but I can’t remember which is which) seem quite happy with their surroundings.

I’ll have to ask my Mum which is which when I see her as she took the cuttings. It’s not going to hurt having them both out of the cold given how small they are.

Meanwhile, back outside we have today’s number two, which is two Cordylines looking beautiful.

They’re both in planters, the green one stands proud at the back of my birthday planter and the pink one is nearer the house in my patio planter. They give some welcome interest and much needed colour to the sleeping garden!

There are still a few plants desperately soldiering on and producing colourful petals to cheer the gloom. For number three I’m going to share my Erysimum.

This was from the sale table in Notcutts in Summer 2018. I planted it out last Spring and it did well all through this Summer. I’m not keen on pink, but this pink is rich enough to delight the senses.

Number four was a recent purchase that was planted out towards the end of the Summer.

Fatsia Japonica, whose leaves have something of a look of a giant Marijuana plant! How do I know this, you may ask with a knowing smirk? Well, you try going to the Caribbean and not seeing Marijuana leaves depicted on every piece of tourist tat for sale! Anyway, there’s nothing illegal about this lovely specimen. It’s supposed to get pretty big and it’s grown quite a few new leaves already so here’s hoping.

For my penultimate point I’m using a photo that I took purely because I liked the way the rain looked on the leaf.

This is a cluster of leaves on my Scarlet Patio Rose. I love how the leaves are tinged with pink, picking up the pink of the emerging shoots below and the blurred Heather in the background, and the rain droplets that reflect the light and accentuate the leaves’ veins.

I’m going to end on a festive note which I think is acceptable given that the big day is only five and a bit weeks away.

Holly! We have an abundance of it in the garden which can be painful when it gets too big and requires pruning! None of the Holly bushes flower or get berries which I think must mean we only have one sex of Holly bush resulting in absolutely no copulation at all, and therefore no offspring.

Right, I’m off to do something that doesn’t require gas or electricity now I can see exactly what it’s costing us! While I’m freezing to death in the dark why don’t you pop over to check out more Sixes on the Propagator’s blog.