I'm looking forward to celebrating the winter solstice on Monday, and from then on we will have more hours of daylight, and more time to spend outside. In the lead up to the shortest day, I was expecting lots of drabness outside this morning, however as we know from #SixOnSaturday, the more we look, the more delights we find in the garden.
I thought there might be a greenhouse based entry, but on the way down there, I thought I'd take the cover off the Echium to allow it a bit of breathing room, now in it's third year, I'm hoping it will flower next summer, so I'm taking particular care of it, although it is leaning over a lot and is propped up with a wooden structure. Anyway here it is:
I noticed the hellebores were shooting up a few days ago, so thought I'd photograph those, however the cyclamen coum have overtaken them and look wonderful just now.
I thought I'd have a look at some of the seeds I have sown, ready to plant them out in spring and be well ahead of the game with decent sized plants by March.My
Clematis cassandra which is an upright one, bought form
Marcus Dancer a few years ago is always much admired, so I thought I'd collect a few seeds and sow them, and here are the results below looking quite healthy
The next seedlings I'd like to share are these, they don't look very good from the photo, the seeds were collected from some very large umbellifers at West Dean Gardens, the parent plants were about 8 foot tall, and the seeds huge. The surface of the soil has grown algae, but I'm sure all will be fine with the plants themselves.
These are Ammi majus seedlings, pricked out into their individual pots. Pleased with them, they are among my favourite flowers.
And finally I collected seed from wild carrot and sowed them, but haven't yet pricked them out, there's a pattern emerging here, umbellifers and more umbellifers!
So there are my six, renewal and hope are the things which keep gardeners going, and we certainly need to hold onto those thoughts at the tail end of this difficult year when new guidelines have just been issued about Christmas celebrations at 4pm this afternoon.
Stay safe everyone and let's look forward to when we can connect with more than our garden. I'm off now to see what news there is from The Boss, also known as The Propagator who started this wonderful #sixonsaturday. It turns out he's still got bulbs to plant, but on the positive side, he's found a trowel.
You've reminded me I must check the echium seedlings that came up in the front garden after I disturbed the soil earlier in the year. They're much smaller than yours so I'll probably have to get them through next winter as well. It'll be interesting to see how true to the parent the Clematis seedlings are.
ReplyDeleteYes it will be interesting to see how the Clematis seedlings turn out. They look quite vigorous at the moment. I'm not sure I'd grow and echium again, I cover it every time there's a threat of frost and then leave the cover on too long I think. One day I'll get caught out and forget to cover it.
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