Last #SixOnSaturday in April

With more record temperatures this week, and some rain, although not regularly enough,it seems as though plants are romping through their life cycles. I want them to slow down, in case we run out of flowers before the end of the summer. I went out this morning to choose the stars of the garden, thinking before I went out that we were going to be talking about pinks and purples. What I ended up with is quite a lot of clashing colours, fortunately not too close to each other in the garden.
So here goes, why did these make the top 6, and what's the story behind them?

 This azalea, like the tree peony last week was a free gift with a plant order goodness knows how many years ago. I bought some ericaceous compost for it, and try and water it with rainwater rather than tap water. I'm sure it needs repotting, but it flowers tolerably well once a year, and I do like the flowers, they remind me of my parent's garden where the soil was acid and azaleas grew really well in the flower beds. It's probably at its peak today.

 This Auricula forms part of a collection bought from Pops Plants about 8 years ago, I was rather impressed with it this morning, and it's the only yellow one I have. It's leaves are also a lighter green than the red Auriculas and have a grey hue to them making it seem a bit of a superior specimen!

 Suddenly the Aquilegias are flowering, there are several colours and flower shapes in the garden, most seem to self seed, however sadly I think some have downy mildew and so I won't have as many this year. I'll dig out those affected and put them in my green bin, not compost them.

 Next, above, is a very colourful Phlox, aren't they fantastic? I've got a pale lilac one as well, and had another with lilac and white flowers, but that didn't do as well as this one.

 This is a different fern than the one I photographed last week, it has knobbly bits on the side which I think make it easy to identify.

 

I wasn't sure about my sixth choice, it's virtually a weed, but does provide a wonderful pale blue fluffy look in the garden for a couple of weeks. I'm talking about forget me not, seen above with a viola. So this is what the collage looked like:

Not a harmonius look this week, but some real stars in the garden nevertheless.
These didn't make it, although they did very well:

 Above a mixture of blue and white forget me nots. I'm not sure how the white ones arrived, but they do look good

 Hard to see from here, but this is Geranium Bill Wallis, a beautiful, almost wild geranium. It's a bit like Erigeron karvinskianu, you like it growing in profusion, someone gives you some of it, and it takes ages to get going, and then as you have been warned, it will spread everywhere.

The apple blossom has been fantastic this year, probably just past its peak, but lovely all the same.
Don't forget to have a look at The Propagator's blog here he's the inspiration behind the #SixOnSaturday idea.