This week’s six on sat is just a few snaps of this week’s garden highlights.
Six on Saturday is a garden oriented meme where people post a picture or two about six things happening in their garden each week. Couldn’t be simpler.
The dahlias are smashing!
The sedums are a reliable block of colour at this time of year, I’m glad they take so easily from cuttings and I’ve been planting them out in spots that need a little lift. Putting repeated flowers around the place makes it look like we have a design scheme, and it’s free!
The Michaelmas daisies are doing splendidly with nothing but neglect to sustain them. Such a sweet and surprisingly sturdy little flower.
The clematis at the front door is putting on a fantastic burst of blooms, the salvia hotlips is in full bloom despite the autumn weather, and the sumac tree is turning from green to red.
There’s an interesting chemical processes behind why leaves change colour, when the trees stop producing green chorophyll as the days get shorter. The same stuff that makes carrots orange gives autumn leaves their colour.
A group of chemicals called carotenoids are always found in leaves. These help protect plants from sun damage. Once chlorophyll’s dominant green is reduced, fiery oranges become much bolder. https://forestryandland.gov.scot/blog/autumn-leaves-colour-chemistry
Just before storm Amy arrived I grabbed a bunch of flowers before they got completely battered by the weather. I’m glad I did because that massive dahlia is smashing.
Have a lovely weekend
J x
PS – I recently saw a movie trailer for a film called ‘Smashing Machine’ about the exciting and dramatic life of an American wrestler.
I would like to see a UK film called ‘Smashing Machine’ about the genial host of a light entertainment darts show.
“I was so poor at the game-show game. I would say ‘What do you do for a living?’. They would reply ‘I have been unemployed for two years’ — and I would say ‘Smashing’. It was just a word to give me a chance to think. The luckiest moment of my career was getting Bullseye.” https://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/news/13636432.Jim_Bowen_____Why_my_life_is_so_smashing___/
Hi Jen, lovely sextet as usual! We too have sedums coming into their own, clematis (now almost at an end for the year), Michaelmas daisies (threatening to take over the garden — they’re thuggish here), and a couple of salvias which i think used to be Hotlips but seem to have reverted to plain red. All performing St Vitus’ Dance as Amy rampages around the garden.
This is our flower of the year: the Thunbergia (aka Black-eyed Susan?). Not even supposed to grow this far north, let alone flower so prolifically and for so long — it’s even opened more flowers since i took this photo ten days ago. And a highly relevant name, thinking of our Greta and hoping she and the other flotiller@s are all right.
So looking forward to seeing you and Ki soon!
Loads of love M xxx
My new poetry pamphlet, The unreliability of rainbows (Yaffle’s Nest, 2024), is here!
Hi Mandy, looking forward to seeing you soon. I hope some of your flowers survive storm Amy, especially the aptly named Thunbergia 🙂 J xx
You still have a lot of color in the garden. I am down to purple and pink asters and a little yellow from Calendula, Dracopsis, Solidago and broccoli gone to seed – that is my most reliable flower as we head towards winter. Your words about leaf pigments reminded me of a freshman biology lab forty years ago. We extracted ground up leaves and extracted them, then spotted a bit of the extract onto filter paper and did simple chromatography to separate the pigments. There were three lines, the dominant green and two different yellows. no idea what the plant was, though I am sure it was in my notes. The dahlias are gorgeous!
Clematis?! We barely get them to bloom briefly in spring. Does yours take a break through the warmth of summer, and then resume bloom when the weather gets cooler?
Lovely Dahlia.
I tend to go for the brighter coloured Dahlias but yours is a beauty. Not looking forward to seeing what’s left of mine tomorrow.