How did summer come so quickly, and why do I feel it is so ‘rushed’ every year? The mysteries of time perception are fascinating! Summer has started with the end to the long dry warm spell, and some ‘April shower’ sort of weather. The new normal maybe? The garden loves it. I’ve been away for a week, in that time, spring flowers have finished (still lots of dead-heading to do) and the summer ones are coming. Here is a mixture for this week’s #SixOnSaturday

Water iris have been late-comers this year, almost a month late. But well work waiting for.

I grow this daisy-like plant in a pot, to offer a ‘pop’ of colour on the little bench by the greenhouse. There’s a good pop going here just now, with the most wonderful saturated red/pink.

I started growing dianthus just a couple of years ago. What a revelation. Lots of different colours, many scented, robust to winds, and the flowers are beautiful.

Despite the dry spring, several of my clematis are putting on a great show. This one is magnificent. I watched a tree bee slowly extracting nectar from the centre of this one.

Summer hardy geranium have popped out their first flowers, I hadn’t noticed until I walked round to the south-facing borders. This is such a great plant, with loads of ground cover and wonderful flowers. The detail of the flower centre is worth a close inspection, and the array of many blooms looks stunning from a distance.

Last this week, another iris. The colour and intricacy of the form of the flower make one stop and contemplate these blooms. One of the most interesting blooms that appears in my garden.

I hope you liked my first #SixOnSaturday of the summer. I wonder what this summer will bring, hopefully a warm and stable weather pattern, but only time will tell. 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