It’s the first day of meteorological spring. A sunny day is promised and I’m going to get out and garden for the first time in over 3 months (due to rehabbing new hip). I hope you enjoy my #SixOnSaturday comprising blooms to celebrate the new season.

We’ll start with the soon to finish winter flowers. Crocus are coming to the end of their season, as ever they have provided bursts of hopeful colour through the drab of February.

Much more diminutive is the tiny red male flower at the very top of the luxurious female hazel catkins. Hopefully warmish winds will pollinate and allow hazelnuts to do well in the year ahead.

I could not help myself at the local “Jamesfield Nursery” who are having a primrose festival. I love the frilliness of the runcled flowers on my new primula.

The very first narcissi are in flower. This miniature daffodil sits next to the now glowing pulmonaria. A great combination of pretty flowers and furry foliage.

The first tiny Scilla are coming into bloom. I hope parts of the garden will be a sea of blue soon.

Last but not least, I recommend trying anemone in pots, they seem to flower very early. These ones are so cheerful, growing in a tall metal pot near the greenhouse.

It’s so much like spring now that I don’t want to miss a moment of it. Thanks to those leaving comments on the blog – sorry if I don’t always get back to you on time! The blog is going well, but it would be great if more folk on Mastodon, or other parts of the Fediverse got into tooting a Six! Go on, it’s a much kinder form of social media, not controlled by crazy billionaires. All you need to do is find 6 things in your garden to show us. Then post on social, or add a link at Jim’s blog below. For regulars, our organiser is Jim at https://gardenruminations.co.uk/. And I’m on mastodon @julie3dharris@mastodon.scot

February is a short month on paper, yet the grey cool days drag on….except now it’s 12 deg and we have a few days promised of warmer, yet grey and windy. It was tricky to collect garden joy this week as we’ve had wind and rain too. This week, therefore, I’ve focused my camera on activities in the house and greenhouse for my #SixOnSaturday.

First, in the warmth of a warm windowsill, the first tiny tomato seedlings are on their way.

In the greenhouse, I’ve completed a first stage of potting-on, for a cluster of little pak-choi, that I hope will be eaten before the greenhouse warms too much. We will see if they quickly enough.

I can’t remember quite when sweet William were sown, sometime in autumn. Sheltering in the greenhouse for now, I’ll maybe pot them out in a month or so, they are starting to grow away nicely.

An overwintering experiment that sometimes works looks like it might this year. I have been trying to overwinter Alberto Rococo chilli plants in the greenhouse. Sometimes they rot. This year, at least one looks like it’s going to make it. Some new growth has been spotted. Up close, the furriness of the leaves are rather attractive.

My last two are both overwintering flowering plants. First, a friend gave me an orange-scented geranium a few years ago. The leaves offer up a delicious smell when rubbed. These grow very well from cuttings, I have a dozen or more plants now. Some of them are starting this seasons flowers.

I’ll finish this week with a shot of a much loved osteospermum. This one was grown from a tiny potted plant. It spends part of summer in the garden, all of winter in the greenhouse, and seems to flower for abut 10 months with gorgeous purple blooms.

I hope you enjoyed yet another ‘late winter’ (??) #SixOnSaturday, this time with the promise of spring coming. Thanks to those leaving comments on the blog – sorry if I don’t always get back to you on time! The blog is going well, but it would be great if more folk on Mastodon, or other parts of the Fediverse got into tooting a Six! Go on, it’s a much kinder form of social media, not controlled by crazy billionaires. All you need to do is find 6 things in your garden to show us. Then post on social, or add a link at Jim’s blog below. For regulars, our organiser is Jim at https://gardenruminations.co.uk/. And I’m on mastodon @julie3dharris@mastodon.scot

The region where I live has been stuck under a ceiling of cold grey cloud for about a week now. It is hard to be bothered to go out and look at the garden. I always forget that the February run up to spring is very much wintery. I did get out, though it was hard to find much inspiration. Some of this week’s #SixOnSaturday are from my little trips out, others from the house and the greenhouse.

I will start in the warm. I sowed chilli seeds, as I always do, in January. They have been resting cosy on a warm windowsill above a radiator since then. Some have done very well. This is a dish of cayenne seedlings, growing away nicely now. Helps me think of the heat to come.

Into the greenhouse, I’ve had some success this year with osteospermum cuttings. Here is (admittedly) by best one, growing away nicely, even though it is currently only 3 degC in the greenhouse. I will be pinching out those flower buds to promote stronger growth.

Braving the outdoors, a few hellebore have found their way into ground just below a twisty hazel tree. Here are the flowers peeping through the hazel branches. I like the combination of pale lime-green against the brown twistiness.

A surprise was in store in a south-facing corner, almost under a garden shrub. The shelter and dryness must have promoted a few euphorbia into flower. I’m beginning to see a green theme emerging this week that I hadn’t planned!

Some green here too, but I also liked the mix of yellows, browns and reds (perhaps the stress of winter cold) in this little clump of saxifrage urbium.

I cannot get around the garden without feeling, yet again, the joy of snowdrops. One shady east-facing border has naturalised to a full-on carpet of flowers. I’ll be heading for a nearby visit to a ‘snowdrop garden’, at Cambo, Fife, next week. Hope to see many many thousands more of these there.

I hope you enjoyed yet another ‘late winter’ (??) #SixOnSaturday. Thanks to those leaving comments on the blog – sorry if I don’t always get back to you on time! The blog is going well, but it would be great if more folk on Mastodon, or other parts of the Fediverse got into tooting a Six! Go on, it’s a much kinder form of social media, not controlled by crazy billionaires. All you need to do is find 6 things in your garden to show us. Then post on social, or add a link at Jim’s blog below. For regulars, our organiser is Jim at https://gardenruminations.co.uk/. And I’m on mastodon @julie3dharris@mastodon.scot

The light returns! We’ve had some cold crips clear days. There is now light(ish) when I wake around 7-ish, and the sun is going down just before 5pm. It feels wonderful to see the light days coming back. I think my plants agree. This week’s #SixOnSaturday suggests how garden plants are responding too.

My first offering shows a detail of a viburnum in full flower. This week I noticed bees feeding from it’s tiny blooms for the first time this year.

There is some growing action in one of the main flower borders. A furry poppy that will have hand-sized large pink blooms is pushing forward. If we have some hard frosts these leaves will be gone. But for now, things look promising.

The greenhouse shelters my little lemon tree during winter. There’s a tasty looking lemon almost ready to pick, and lots of little ones.

I’m hoping for species tulips soon. The foliage is well on its way, no sign of flowers yet. if there’s heavy rain, I may need to bring these bulbs into the greenhouse as any flower buds will rot if there’s too much wet.

Some brave chard have managed to overwinter. The pink stems on this one are a real gem. If sunny afternoons continue, the big stone garden wall will warm these beds and the plants will bolt. I may try a new recipe I’ve found for chard kimchi. If I harvest leaves now, there could be another flush for the dinner table before the flowers buds come in a month or so.

Last this week, there has been enough sunshine at the front of a sheltered border, near the house, for crocus to emerge. I can almost bring myself to think of ‘early spring’ when I see these (but it might be FAR too soon to speak of spring).

I hope you enjoyed a ‘late winter’ (??) #SixOnSaturday. Thanks to those leaving comments on the blog – sorry if I don’t always get back to you on time! The blog is going well, but it would be great if more folk on Mastodon, or other parts of the Fediverse got into tooting a Six! Go on, it’s a much kinder form of social media, not controlled by crazy billionaires. All you need to do is find 6 things in your garden to show us. Then post on social, or add a link at Jim’s blog below. For regulars, our organiser is Jim at https://gardenruminations.co.uk/. And I’m on mastodon @julie3dharris@mastodon.scot

Wow, a new month of 2025 already, and yet winter drags on. I know we’ve now passed the darkest 10 weeks of the year, but it’s a long haul to spring too. I’ve been struggling a bit to find all-new things each week, so today you’ll see some new stuff and some progress on things I’ve already shown off this year. Here are my #SixOnSaturday.

Some promise to start, I’m CLOSE, but still maybe a couple of weeks off from flowers on this magnolia stellatar. The buds have a lovely furriness, picked out by the afternoon sun yesterday.

A great all-rounder, I’m not sure I like heather, it’s a bit boring. But this tree-heather has grown into a 1.5m evergreen shrub, and the limey green foliage really brightens up a winter’s day, especially against the born-grey stone wall.

A long way off still, but there is something fascinating in the way that tulip shoots come up in one of the pots that sits waiting for spring.

Some colour from witch-hazel. This one lives in a shady spot on the drive. At this time of year it is almost fully shaded by the house, with about 5 minutes of direct sunlight late in the afternoon. The flowers come late, but they last for weeks.

A bit early for the hazel tree, but catkins are just starting to swell now, and will be in full flower soon. These are the resilient ones that did not get blown off in the 80mph winds as week ago!

Surely, surely, this is peak flowering time for one of my all-year favourites, the wonderful purple hellebore. And with my new hip almost 2 months old, I’m healed enough to risk bending down to grab a photo of it’s wonderful flowers.

I hope you enjoyed another wintery #SixOnSaturday. Thanks to those leaving comments on the blog – sorry if I don’t always get back to you on time! The blog is going well, but it would be great if more folk on Mastodon, or other parts of the Fediverse got into tooting a Six! Go on, it’s a much kinder form of social media, not controlled by crazy billionaires. All you need to do is find 6 things in your garden to show us. Then post on social, or add a link at Jim’s blog below. For regulars, our organiser is Jim at https://gardenruminations.co.uk/. And I’m on mastodon @julie3dharris@mastodon.scot

I’m sitting in the dark on a Friday evening preparing my #SixOnSaturday. Storm Éowyn has cut our power, and it looks like we might loose a laburnum tree from the garden, which is currently sitting at an unpleasantly jaunty angle at the west end of the garden. It could be worse. We still have the roof on! Just nearby there have been gust of over 100mph recorded, wow. Luckily, I collect my six yesterday, so here they are. I’m going to post this early, while I still have a data signal.

First up, it was hard to record the storm by camera. Here, you can see adjust sweeping over the pond and flattening last years grasses, which were standing high.

In a quiet, sheltered corner, aconites have just appeared, sitting amidst the shoots of daffodil and other spring bulbs.

Nearby, a clump of cyclamen looks lovely, but yet again, it has no flowers. Anyone have any idea why?

Some lovely furry shoots of something are coming up in the border. Not sure what this is, possibly the hardy perennial cornflower.

This evergreen has grown waist high from a tiny cutting I was given in north west Scotland many years ago. We call it a New Zealand Holly. I’m not sure what else it is called.

Last, but very much not least. I posted a blue crocus bud next week. It wasn’t — it was a lovely iris, here it is now in full flower.

I hope you enjoyed my stormy #SixOnSaturday. Thanks to those leaving comments on the blog – sorry if I don’t always get back to you on time! The blog is going well, but it would be great if more folk on Mastodon, or other parts of the Fediverse got into tooting a Six! Go on, it’s a much kinder form of social media, not controlled by crazy billionaires. All you need to do is find 6 things in your garden to show us. Then post on social, or add a link at Jim’s blog below. For regulars, our organiser is Jim at https://gardenruminations.co.uk/. And I’m on mastodon @julie3dharris@mastodon.scot

This week we’ve had a warm-snap, with temperatures up to 11 and 12 deg C. Some things have put on a spurt of growth, I’ve put on a spurt of walking round the garden and looking at stuff. It seems like some cooler air from France is on its way though. Before I get to the gentle wander round that this week’s #SixOnSaturday represents, here’s a bonus image for those with a geeky interest in temperature. I have combined the latter with last year’s new hobby of crochet to start a ‘temperature blanket’ — choose a pallet of colours, then crochet of row of the appropriate colour, every day, all year. So far, the first 12 days of the year are here (New Years Day was rather warm, hence the limey green). Now I need to go and add that warm snap in ‘nougat’.

For this week’s six, I will start with warm thoughts about the growing season. I thought I’d try some early greens, the first seeds of pak choi and mustard have been started in the house, now they must take their chances in the greenhouse.

Last year’s flowers are featuring still in the borders, with hebe just flowering and flowering. I had to show this close-up, what a delicate cluster of little flowerlets.

In terms of new growth, witch hazel has just begun to unfurl its tiny pale, yet sweet-smelling flowers.

Snowdrops have decided that now is the time to start flowering, although the cold-to-come should slow them down quite a bit.

One of my small-flowered roses has also started to give growth a grow, with new leaves coming amidst last year’s rose-hips.

My most joyful find of this week is the start of the crocus season. It must have got warm enough on the windowsill near the house door to start them off. Almost in flower!

I hope you enjoyed another winter #SixOnSaturday. It is midwinter, yet just a short stagger into the garden on a sunny day brings hope and joy. Thanks to those leaving comments on the blog – sorry if I don’t always get back to you on time! The blog is going well, but it would be great if more folk on Mastodon, or other parts of the Fediverse got into tooting a Six! Go on, it’s a much kinder form of social media, not controlled by crazy billionaires. All you need to do is find 6 things in your garden to show us. Then post on social, or add a link at Jim’s blog below. For regulars, our organiser is Jim at https://gardenruminations.co.uk/. And I’m on mastodon @julie3dharris@mastodon.scot

This week we have had a cold snap, with daytime highs just above freezing and some proper night frosts (-4.5 dec C). We are well above the snow belt that is covering the rest of the UK, so there have been lots of glorious skies and wonderful winter light. I made the most of it to show you a couple of blooms, and lots of buds, for this week’s #SixOnSaturday.

A wonderful bloom, this is a simple hellebore with mostly a lime-green flower that is easy to overlook. Yet, look a bit closer, those petals have a very odd red rim. Interesting ancient-looking flower.

My second blooms is also somewhat diminutive. Tiny flowers come on the pieris at this time of year, well in advance of the new red leaf growth that will come in late winter.

As I browse around the garden, with my walking sticks crunching against the frosty grass, I see many plants coming into bud. The pear tree against the house wall is full of buds, standing out against the solid blue winter sky.

A year ago, I tried a bit of rhododendron pruning, which must have been at the wrong time of year, because the flowering was disappointing. It’s looking much better a year on.

I’m also hoping for many blooms on the little shrubby magnolia stellata in February. There’s a wonderful cluster of buds this year, with an interesting fan of branches.

Last up, I caught one of the apple trees in the afternoon sun, just before sunset at about 3.35pm, a great time to be in the garden attending to what’s new. Also good to feel the light coming back, this week sunset was more like 3.40pm….it’s getting lighter every day.

I hope you enjoyed another winter #SixOnSaturday. It is midwinter, yet just a short stagger into the garden on a sunny day brings hope and joy. Thanks to those leaving comments on the blog – sorry if I don’t always get back to you on time! The blog is going well, but it would be great if more folk on Mastodon, or other parts of the Fediverse got into tooting a Six! Go on, it’s a much kinder form of social media, not controlled by crazy billionaires. All you need to do is find 6 things in your garden to show us. Then post on social, or add a link at Jim’s blog below. For regulars, our organiser is Jim at https://gardenruminations.co.uk/. And I’m on mastodon @julie3dharris@mastodon.scot

The start of a new year. Each time it happens now I feel old, how did we get 25% into the 21st century, and what a mess we’ve got our world into……but enough of that. The first snow-sprinkle of the year has given my garden a fresh perspective. A new year also brings new ideas for the garden, new growth, even a few new blooms. I have a new hip going into this new year (3 weeks old!), so can’t get down as far as I’d like for close-ups, but I had a try, to find lots of little gems for the first #SixOnSaturday of the year.

The VERY first persicarium flower of the year was spotted this morning, poking out from a recent sprinkle of snow. What a delight.

On evergreen plants there are often winter berries. This shrub has had lots, but only a few are hidden enough to evade the squabbling blackbirds.

This creeping oleander vine can be a bit of a spreading menace at warmer times, but just now, its little flowers glowing against the sun-warmed house wall look lovely. I have always admired the slightly spiral form of the petals.

On a winter bench, I have small tubs of species tulips beginning to appear. Last year, they enjoyed a little winter sun, came early, then got hammered by pouring rain. This year, I’ll take care to move to the greenhouse if there’s rain due when they get into flower.

My favourite winter bloom is the hellebore, and this purple specimen is my favourite of them all. Starting to flower now, with wonderful simple blooms. It is always hard to see the full flower due to their nodding habit.

A cold day today, the pond was just beginning to thaw a little to allow garden birds to come to wash and drink. The textured surface looks peacefully beautiful.

I hope you enjoyed my first #SixOnSaturday for the year. It is midwinter, yet just a short stagger into the garden on a sunny day brings hope and joy. Thanks to those leaving comments on the blog – sorry if I don’t always get back to you on time! The blog is going well, but it would be great if more folk on Mastodon, or other parts of the Fediverse got into tooting a Six! Go on, it’s a much kinder form of social media, not controlled by crazy billionaires. All you need to do is find 6 things in your garden to show us. Then post on social, or add a link at Jim’s blog below. For regulars, our organiser is Jim at https://gardenruminations.co.uk/. And I’m on mastodon @julie3dharris@mastodon.scot

The last Saturday of 2024. I thought I’d do a review of the year for today’s #SixOnSaturday, especially as it’s been dull and grey over the holiday week, so not much incentive to approach the garden. I must say, it has not been the best year. Dull, cool, damp weather has coincided with my ability to get working in the garden being compromised by 2 hip surgeries (on the same sad joint) that bookended the year. Urgghhh, bring on 2025 and let’s make a fresh start. There’s have been a few plusses this year.

First plus is that it turns out Swiss Chard love a cool, grey damp summer. Some have grown almost 1m tall, as you see on farmed crops. We are still enjoying the harvest (if the frosts don’t get too bad in January).

I always exhibit my fabulous (and sometimes less than fabulous) veg at the local village show, always near the start of August. This year was poor, mostly because the veg simply wasn’t ready. I often win one or two prizes for tomatoes, that are grown in a wonderful large greenhouse. This year, no such lock, there were barely any ripe for the show, but they were marvellous about 3 weeks later. the striped ones to the lower left were really juicy (Audrey’s Love I think). The black ones were fun, but tend to have rather thick and bitter skin. Perhaps we’re too far north for such exotic delights.

Garden beans usually require a really good summer. I was unsurprised that my ‘climbing French’ varieties just disappeared. However, runner beans and borlotti did well, and well into September. I had a couple of bowls to enjoy in winter soups (as we are doing now).

2024 has not been a wonderful year for flowers. I love dahlias, they really did not like the lack of sunshine. Others did well though. Spring was long and cool. A number of different varieties of narcissus enjoyed the cool, and bloomed for weeks.

In what wasn’t exactly a tall ‘high summer’ in June, there were lots of lovely blooms around. It is fun to look back at the photos, hard to imagine all this pink in the garden when December dark hovers over all.

Finally, this was very much the year for roses. Across most years, they don’t do much. Maybe a combination of dry and coolish. They flourished in this year’s wet spells, there are just a few even trying to send out buds now. Here’s a stunning example from September.

That’s my #SixOnSaturday for this week, and for the year. Time for a refresh, bring on 2025. Enjoy it when it comes folks. Thanks to those leaving comments on the blog – sorry if I don’t always get back to you on time! The blog is going well, but it would be great if more folk on Mastodon, or other parts of the Fediverse got into tooting a Six! Go on, it’s a much kinder form of social media, not controlled by crazy billionaires. All you need to do is find 6 things in your garden to show us. Then post on social, or add a link at Jim’s blog below. For regulars, our organiser is Jim at https://gardenruminations.co.uk/. And I’m on mastodon @julie3dharris@mastodon.scot