Six on Saturday – September Catch Up

I’ve missed a few Saturday’s this month – work and home time pressures, TV series starting and ending (he guiltily admits) and the increasingly painstakingness of working on a computer – not to mention shooting and editing decent photos – with continued vision loss. My eye surgery has yet to be scheduled but I’ve been told that when it does happen, my vision will be so much sharper I’ll want to go back and re-process every photo I’ve published in the past year. Harumph, I say! In any event, here are six things in my garden, shots taken during the past few weeks. To see much sharper and more topical groups of Sixes from around the world, visit The Propagator‘s site – I’m hoping to see loads of daffodils blooming in Australasia this week!

1 – I have a dozen or so sunflowers scattered around. They’re tall, multi-branched things, all volunteers from original sunflowers purposefully started from seed three or four years ago. One; however, is short (less than a metre high) with interesting two toned petals. If I can collect some seeds befre the birds get t them I’d like to see what they produce next year:-

2 – I purchased another small popcorn Cassia (Senna didymobotrya) in the spring. I loved the tropical look of the foliage last year, and also, of curse, the buttered popcorn smell when you rub the leaves. Oh, and the flowers! I found this shot from above interesting for a few reasons, among them how it appears to have lots of baby Cassia below the main plant. In fact, they are Lupines that have sprung up around it.

3 – Nasturtiums started out strong – really strong! Then one day they were all gone. Dead looking, either from drought, or, more likely, hungry insects. All that was left were a thousand withering white stems waving in the breeze. I cut those back but didn’t pull out the plants and the result has been a lovely late summer second bloom:

4 – I love it when a plant can be interesting and useful in more than one season. Trees that bloom in the spring, provide shade in summer, have beautiful fall foliage and then in winter, has lovely textured or coloured bark. Kousa dogwood comes to mind. Nigella is a perennial that ticks a few of the boxes – foliage, flower, pollinator friendly and now it seems, even as the plant withers the seedheads are unusual enough to provide a striking focal point. I’ve even, as Eliza suggested, snipped some seed head stems off and hung them upside-down to dry. They’ll be useful in winter, in a vase or two:

5 – September is Aster month. One of the natives that shows up here and there is short, maybe 50 cm, with arching branches and very tight clusters of small white flowers. I like it a lot and try to encourage it to spread:

6 – Finally – what would September be without Colchicum? These large bulbs produce crocus-like flowers in the fall (they come in white or various shades of lavender) and large strappy leaves in the early spring. The leaves quickly die back.

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