I was away in a properly hot and sunny south of England last weekend for a family wedding. It was fun, and great to bring at least a bit of that warmth back up north with me this week. To celebrate that we’ve had temperatures over 20 degC for 3 days running, here are some colourful, yet simple, daisy-like blooms. My #SixOSaturday.

First this week, here’s a sample from a swathe of tall white flowers that almost fill one of the long thin beds. Cheery, robust to winds, and stand up in a vase for absoutely ages.

Something a little harder to grow in our chilly conditions, cosmos have finally decided to grow and bloom. This is a new one for me this year, a rich wine colour, lovely in a mixed annual bed.

With cosmos on my mind, I also chose a pure white version this year. So far, they seem to be offering multiple blooms on each stem, very nice.

MUCH taller, at around 2m, these flowers grow tall and very strong, I think they are a native to north American prairie, are they a kind of helenium?

Another shot at white daisyness, I have a few stands of these. I call them ‘shredded daisies’ due to those tiny long thin petals. i think I like them, but they can get a bit battered.

My favourite this year, and finally a helenium that is robust enough to over-winter, just soak in the glorious red of this one. And the lovely yellow and black detail of the flower centre. Stunning.

I hope you enjoyed the first of my collection of bright mid-summer flowers. And 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, its 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