I thought I would have a change this week for Six on Saturday, so instead of flowers or the garden I will show you some butterflies which visited the other day when the sun was shining and there was hardly any wind, ideal butterfly weather. Now it is cool and wet, so no butterflies to be seen today unfortunately.
No 1 Peacock
Most of these butterflies are all on the same buddleia bush.
The weather this week has seen a bit of rain, a bit of sunshine and a lot of grey cloud, I’m now back watering all my pots once more. Weeding has been tackled when the rain decided to stop and at least they are coming out easily. All my organisations and committees are starting up once more so my time working in the garden is decided by how many meetings I have to go to, I think gardening will be cut by half. Here are my six for this Saturday…
No 1 Crocosmia solfaterre
Crocosmia solfaterre in front of my blue lacecap Hydrangea at the top of the garden by the pergola. This has now spread to form a nice sized clump.
We have had quite a lot of rain this week, everything is growing fast in the few hours of sunshine that we have had. Not much work got done in the garden because of the rain, there will be so much for me to do when I finally get out there. I think this weeks 6 are a mixed bag, so I’ll start with my first,
No 1 Red Admiral butterfly.
Red Admiral butterflies are everywhere when the sun shines, there are so many of them. This one seems nice and fresh, but even so has a bite out of its wing.
After a week of storms and torrential rain with bits of sunshine thrown in between, most of the plants are still upright and looking bright and perky. The two main ones that have been toppled were Crocosmia Lucifer and Miscanthus malepartus. I managed to get Lucifer back upright without it looking as though it is in a straightjacket, but had problems with the miscanthus as it is rather large by now. I was wearing a short sleeved T shirt and ended up with a nasty rash on both my upper arms and masses of long diagonal cuts on both arms, plus something bit me on the inside of my elbow! I’m presuming the rash came from the sap where I had cut a few stems and all the cuts must have come from the leaves which I hadn’t realised must be sharp, oh, the joys of gardening! Here are my 6 for this week.
No 1 Hydrangea
Hydrangea Ayesha with lovely incurved petals like a lilac.
July has been a very strange month weather wise, first of all cold with torrential rain each day which caused flooding in the lowest part of the garden, then a heat wave with temperatures up at 31C, far too hot for me, I felt I was melting!. We now have a cooler spell, yesterday with thunder and lightning, I came in when that started, it was followed by torrential rain and I decided that I had done enough gardening for one day. The plants have coped remarkably well through all this and the weeds have also coped too well, I’m still pulling them out. I’ve had a lot of cutting back and propping up to do after a storm last weekend, when a lot got flattened. Colour in the garden hasn’t stopped at all, the roses are having a rest for a while, but other plants have carried on flowering, it has been one wave after another, so I’ll just show you some long views of how the garden is looking now.
The view from down by the greenhouse and the field, up behind the dead oak looking towards the pergola. This is the part of the garden which now gets flooded each time there is torrential rain. The silver birch and lots of other plants are now dead, but I think I will keep the silver birch and plant a clematis up it, planting it further back towards the hedge where it stays drier. This is where the daylilies have done ever so well, maybe I could move some more to here.
Having gone from one extreme to the other, from temperatures in the teens with rain every day, to temperatures soaring up to 30 C and even 31 C this week, I have been melting away because I’m just not used to it. My plants aren’t used to such high temperatures either but they are coping much better than I am. Thank goodness this weekend will be cooler along with some very welcome rain!
My six for this week are as follows
no 1 Crocosmia Paul’s Best Yellow
I hopefully planted this in the driveway border, hoping it would flower the same time as the dark blue agapantgus, but they hardly ever coincide, this year is no different, the Agapanthus are still in tight bud, maybe by next Saturday!
The rain has stopped and now we have a heatwave, from one extreme to the other! I hate to say it but it is too hot for me, I’m having to plan my gardening from very early when I get up and do my first gardening session in my pjs, then after breakfast I have to be finished by 10am, after which it just gets far too hot to even think about working. Looking round the garden for 6 plants to feature, needless to say I started in the shade where I found Iris ensata, a Japanese iris, in the bog garden.
No 1 Iris ensata.
It is looking very happy in the shady bog garden, especially with all the rain we have had lately.
Where my garden keeps getting flooded is planted with rather a lot of Hemerocallis or Day Lilies. I hadn’t realised when I planted them many years ago, that they liked water so much. They spent most of the winter sitting with their roots in water and lately I seem to have been flooded regularly, almost every week, and they are looking very happy indeed! I also have lots planted in parts of the garden that don’t get flooded and they too seem very happy. I showed 3 varieties in my last post, but now most of the rest are flowering so here they are, but I have forgotten most of their names over the years.
Once more the garden is changing gear, a lot of the poppies, iris and peonies, but not all, have finished and are handing over to Hydrangeas, Hemerocallis and Crocosmia. The colours are changing with Hemerocallis and Crocosmia, their flowers are looking a lot hotter and I think the garden is trying to tell me that it is summer. We are not having summer temperatures and we are still having rain every day, so it doesn’t really feel like summer at the moment, but my bog plants are happy! The following photos are for my Six on Saturday post.
No 1 Chrysanthemum superbum
Chrysanthemum superbum Wirral Supreme, another plant that reminds me of home in the North West, I spent all my childhood years on the Wirral.
While assessing how the newish planting in the rockery was doing, I realised that quite a few of the plants were in the purple spectrum and they all seemed to be in the centre of the rockery. I will have to have a think about what I can add anongst them.
All looking a bit purple.
