British Weather huh!   What would we do with out it.  Not content on having one of the driest periods I can remember for a long time (can count on one hand the amount of times we have had rain since April) mother nature sends us Storm Hector!   The garden got away relatively easy apart from some wind burn on some Clematis

a couple of garden pinks that were looking big and healthy being  blown out of shape

and some tall sedums that I did not give the Chelsea chop have blown over. After the wind the garden is even drier.  We are forecast for heavy rain tomorrow but I am not convinced we will get a substantial amount. Please God give me rain!

As it is so dry I am going to make do with the plants I have in the garden and I am not going to buy anymore until middle of August. Honest.

This weekend I am going to pot up some perennial seedlings I have been growing. I have decided that I am going to be pretty ruthless and keep 6 of each. The seedlings include, Digitalis Summer Breeze, Viola Bunny Ears, Cupid’s Dart and Globe thistle. I would be interested to know how many Perennial seedlings other people keep to grow on?

This weeks SOS is succulent and six heavy especially for Fred

Here is my SOS. Enjoy!

1. Sedum Trough

Just a small trough but packed full of potential. There are 4 Sedums in here Sedum Oreganum , Sedum Cauticola, Sedum Confusum and Sedum Lineare Sea Urchin. Hopefully this will look great late summer and autumn when they start flowering.

2. Aeonium Aizoon

What a bonus this is. I bought this from Surreal Succulents end of winter as an experiment and it is going to flower. I planted this in my dry trough and it is obviously thriving in the heavy gravel mix. Unfortunately the Blackbirds seem to have take a shining to this trough and have de headed the flowers on a Sedum Purperum but left the flowers on a Cape Blanco right beside it. Hopefully they will leave this alone or there is a good chance they will be baked in a pie 🥧!

3. Sempervivum Flower

These really are too drawer flowers. The colours are so vivid and mesmerising and the anthers gleam like yellow stars. This Sempervivum was an unmade variety but it is not disappointing. Someone mentioned in a blog that the thick pillar of a stem these plants produce reminds them of a alien life form mutating and I can really see what they mean. There is a gravel garden beside my local garden centre and I never noticed until this week that one of the plants is s huge mound of Sempervivum that looks like it has been there for years. The mound seems to bubble like a primeval mutant organism in a prebiotic soup. If you look at it it seems to move. Hopefully one year I will grow a mound as big as that. I will try and get a picture. If the homeowner catches me he will probably think I am mad.

4. Sedum Cape Blanco Flowers

There you go Fred you asked for Sedum flowers and I deliver. Out of the 40 or so Sedums I have only one is flowering. As always bees make a “bee” line to Sedum flowers and this on is no exception. Unfortunately I could not catch one in the act. More pictures of flowering Sedums to follow as and when.

5. Orange Asiatic Lilly and Geum Lady Strathden

Perspective! The Lilly flower is actually much bigger than this picture shows but the Geum poked itself in the way of the camera. The orange Lilly’s had been in a pot for years and had become straggly and unkempt as the compost had not been changed for years. I planted them in the garden last year after mulching it with manure and they are thriving now. The colours is such a deep orange it is really unusual. Lady Starthden is one of my favourite Geums. A wonderful couloir if yellow and it never disappoints and flowers for ages.

4. Clematis Ooh La La

Planted this last autumn and it is starting to produce loads of buds. It looks like it an artist has painted the darker pink on the light pink with seven precise strokes. I am pleased to say that I have buds starting to form on 2 other Clematises that Ali thought were not going to flower this year. Hopefully they will flower soon.

Well that is my SOS. I am off to keep an eye on that Pesky Blackbird.

Thanks for reading. Another one to follow next week…