Six on Saturday – 22/08/2020 – Perfect Days

The last few weeks of August are often the most almost-perfect part of summer: warm but not sweltering days, cooler but not cold evenings and nights, mosquitoes have pretty much disappeared, butterflies are flitting every which way. The only thing that, in my books, would make these weeks totally perfect would be regular rainfall to ease worries over the well and keep the tomatoes and watermelon growing. But that may be asking too much. The garden knows summer is two thirds over: seeds are ripening and being disbursed, last-to-bloom perennials are starting to make their splash, autumn colours are showing up everywhere.

Here are six things in my garden this week. The Propagator hosts this Saturday show and tell on his site for gardeners around the world to share photos of their own six things. It’s also on Twitter – just look for the #SixOnSaturday hashtag.

Goldenrod (Solidago sp.) started to bloom in a few parts of the garden two weeks ago – this gorgeous golden native perennial is now opening up all over the yard. In Canada this is often considered a weed, it can spread so quickly both by seed and underground roots. I love it though as do a multitude of pollinators and leave most of it to grow as it wants at the edges of the yard and in the swale. Editing does happen; however, if it appears in a garden bed.

Until this year I had never noticed the seeds on my three pearl bushes (Exochorda x macrantha ‘The Bride’) I love the little shape and imagine there’s a tiny seed in each of those ribs.

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Two native perennials now blooming under the tall fence-line trees: – woodland sunflower (left – Helianthus divaricatus) and big leaved aster (with its new-fangled botanical name Eurybia macrophylla – I still love Aster macrophyllus myself), which, in real life, has a slightly more purple/mauve tinge to the flower.

A holdover from July – blue globe thistles (I think this is Echinops bannaticus– there are at least two common blue globe thistles, here’s a link explaining the difference). Despite having ‘thistle’ in its name, in my garden this gorgeous plant does not spread easily although it seems to be competing with tall grass quite well.

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Does anyone know if this is a Verbena? It pops up here and there every year, this year it’s amongst my hens and chicks. So lovely, petite, refined…

Finally, I posted shots of my volunteer Datura a while ago. It’s since been madly creating seed pods, each filled with gazillions of tiny, hallucinogenic (like the rest of the plant), seeds. I think it’s kinda cool how the seed pod is so eager to swell up it carries along with it the husk of the flower that attracted the pollinator that started it all.

That’s it for me this week. I hope your weekend will be enjoyable, enlightening, fun and, most of all, safe.