six on Saturday, 2 March 2024

I realized today as I sat down to post a quick Six on Saturday that I haven’t posted one in 2024! My focus has been on writing a series of guides for a tour of English gardens and Roman sites I’m leading with a colleague in June. Also, the weather here in Blount County Alabama has been horrid. Colder, wetter, windier, and for other periods drier than usual, it has been murderous on early flowering plants and left me little to share. I trust readers have been getting a good garden news fix by following Jim Stephens’ Garden Ruminations, the hub of SoS, and by visiting the links to be found there.

1. The first of my six entries illustrates well the frustration these weather patterns have caused. An unusually prolonged freeze in December 2022, then again in March 2023, destroyed the buds on Camellia Japonica ‘Lady Vansittart Sport’; consequently, there were very few blooms. This year she was recovering miraculously , putting out lots of buds. But as you can see in the first photo below this year’s erratic cold has burned most of the buds so that the blooms are not as vibrant as hoped for. As for the photo on the right, this particular plant has a branch or two that blooms with increased or all red in the flowers, presumably from an original grafting stock.

‘Grace Albritton’ has survived recent cold snaps better, though, with fewer damaged buds.

2. The rain drops on the pink petals are leftover from yesterday’s 5.5 inch rainfall, which turned the ‘Ice King’ daffodils of last week in photo one into the wearied flowers in photo two below.

3. On a happier note, the flowering quince (Chaenomeles ‘O Yashima’) that I planted last spring has made it through the winter in good form. I hope that by the close of this summer it will be well established.

4. The columbine (Aquilegia) is reappearing in a heartier cluster than last year. I don’t know the particular cultivar of this plant, which has purple blooms, so I know it is not the native or wild variety, Eastern or Canadian columbine (Aquilegia canadensis), that is red. I find the club-shaped leaves of columbine as attractive as the mature plant—especially when dressed with raindrops.

5. Another perennial breaking through now is sedum, and it wears its raindrops equally well.

6. I’ll close out today’s six indoors. The over-wintering begonias are flourishing, both in their pots and in the kitchen window. Clearly taking more cuttings and planting some of previous cuttings are in order.

The sun is finally out, although the dry creek bed is still flowing with runoff. I hope everyone has a good working or resting weekend—which ever is best for you.