This weeks Six on Saturday selection was freshly picked on a bright spring morning just as the sun was coming up.

By eight the sun was on the bench, and so was the cat.

In the front garden we have a large patch of bluebells – they’re mostly Spanish, with a few of the smaller, more scented English bluebell just about holding on.

The Wildlife trust says “The Spanish bluebell is more vigorous than our native bluebell, so can outcompete it for resources like light and space.” However, the BBC report that “The native bluebell was more fertile and set more seeds than the Spanish bluebell, saving it from the threat of “extinction by hybridisation”. In our garden we have quite a mixture of them.

Grannies bonnets in morning dew and sunshine.

This beautiful red tulip in the lasagne planters brings me much joy. I’m so glad we finally got around to planting these up as had meant to do so for a couple of years or more. So this tulip reminds me that the lesson is Do The Plan, these have provided months of joy after pointless procrastination.

Pansies and mint in a pot – a pleasing pop of colour. And in the greenhouse, one of the seedlings collected from last years pansies has formed a tiny little purple bud.

Apple blossom and morning sunshine on the disco ball.

The ‘magic seeds’ from the horse chestnut have sprouted into baby conker trees. I also have about a dozen acorn seedlings, a few ash saplings…

So there’s lots to do in the garden on this lovely day – I’ll try to get on with repotting pansies and baby trees, bramble patrol and sowing some cosmos.

There are more ‘Six on Saturday’ selections at the garden ruminations blog. I just popped there to post the link and learned that Jim, the kind and knowledgeable host of the Six on Saturday meme / blog, has lost his wife Sue.

He thanks his visitors for their kind words of sympathy, and writes: “It seems to me that the solace to be found comes from the fact that the life of a garden doesn’t hesitate for a moment over the loss of a human; it is governed by the time of year and the climate and its needs have to be met whatever the circumstances of the gardener. Keeping busy is probably the best thing for me just now, so gardening by day and blogging in the evening fits the bill nicely.”

I feel that there is something really soothing and magical in the rhythm of the garden, and I find that recording that change and repetition in an online garden diary has been really helpful for me in many different ways. This blog was started almost ten years ago as a way to ‘keep busy’ while recovering from time in hospital, and making a huge change in where we lived and what we did. Here’s our garden in late spring, about ten years ago when we lived in London and were about to ‘Do The Plan’ to sell our house and move to somewhere greener. We still have those lanterns, and disco balls in the garden. I’m glad we took the plunge and made the change, and did the plan. 🙂

Have a good week

J x