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