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