Soon the days start getting shorter! I’m such an optimist! As I survey my collection of near-empty water butts and lug watering cans around the bits of the place where I haven’t completed the irrigation system installation, I’m almost longing for rain. All the can lugging is eating into the time I have for irrigation system completion, dead-heading, planting, tidying, making the beds and borders bigger and reading the myriad Six on Saturday blogs. I have finally to split my infinitives and admit defeat on that last task. Sorry, but ……. There are over 20 from last week that I haven’t seen yet. This meme is too damned successful.

And it’s not just the number of bloggers participating, it’s the fact that so many feature plants that, as soon as I see them, have to get added to my want list. The inoculations seem to be working on some blogs – Thomas, Jim and Nick for example – but not on others. Susan has joined in the temptation malarkey and it will take the greatest medical brains on the planet to come up with another vaccine quickly.

But I will keep my six simple again this week and hopefully avoid inducing a fit of I-wantness in other readers. Resident cat does not form part of my six but I’ve given him pride of place merely to try to stop him photo-bombing all the time. As he pads round after me, it gets wearing when I find bits of cat appearing in just about every photo I take.

So off we go …..

1 Salvia Nachtvlander

This is one of the shrubby salvias. I took a chance last year, believing the sales pitch that it was hardy. And it has come through the winter fine.

2 Salvia Hot Lips

This one, on the other hand, is classified as half-hardy in most of the UK but I’ve never had a problem with it. It has an interesting reaction to temperature fluctuations, though, with flowers changing to all red or all white and losing their lips.

3 Peace Rose

Arguably my favourite rose despite being a real pain to grow here. Supposedly having good disease resistance, in my garden it succumbs to rust, black spot, aphids, almost holding up a placard saying “Come and get me!” None of my other roses has any of these problems. But its flowers are, in my opinion, unbeatable, the buds having a bright touch of red as they start to open to a creamy yellow tinged with pink at the edges. Generally referred to as “Peace”, her proper name is “Rosa ‘Madame A. Meilland'”.

4 Peony “Something or Other”

The label has disintegrated so it will forever be nameless now. It reliably blooms every other year for me. And the blooms seem to last for ages, unlike many peonies.

5 Antirrhinum molle var mollissima

Hey, I didn’t name it! A long name for a small alpine plant with lovely delicate flowers. I have a few growing in Edifice 2. This is the first to flower; the other two are covered in buds.

6. Anemone ‘Black Swan’

This can be a funny plant to grow. It is known for it’s tendency to romp away strongly for years with the growth getting denser as time goes on but, unlike many Japanese Anemones, lacking any rampant spreading tendency. But suddenly, for no apparent reason at all, it can keel over and snuff it. There’s nothing to indicate that this is about to happen. You just wake up one year and it doesn’t.

Mine is just starting to flower; the early blooms are always smaller (amd sparser) than the later ones. I’ve included a photo showing the purple of the back of the flowers which makes me want to turn them round.

Now if you have lots of time, why not pop over to our hosts blog where, appended to his post of the day, you will find lots (and lots) of links to other posts from the length and longth of the known world.

Until next time, enjoy your garden.