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