A lovely Gazania flower, along with a bonus insect.

Weather

A few bright sunny days, but also a lot of rain. I've not been taking good notes, but it seems like there were no rain free periods longer than a day or so.

Flowering

Overall there is not a lot of difference between what was flowering at the end of August and the end of September.

I think I forgot to mention the yellow Loosestrife in the last roundup and the flowers had almost finished by the end of August. However a few flowers lingered on all the way through September.

Sedum

I can't say I like these that much and in spite of their reputation these ones are not a magnet for bees and butterflies. However they are providing the only bit of colour in the left border at the moment which is very welcome.

Winter jasmine

The winter jasmine is starting to flower. This was one of …

Today summed up September pretty well - it started off sunny, then it rained heavily and then it got sunny again. A story repeated over and over throughout the month. At least it was fairly calm.

It is getting harder to come up with a whole six things and I was going to skip this week, but once the sun came out again I managed to get a few photos.

1 Primula

This Primrose is in the border by the side of the house where even the weeds struggle to grow. It and the winter jasmine were the only plants in flower when I arrived here at the beginning of the year. More and more I can feel the year's cycle beginning to close.

You can see how it was originally a few pictures down into the original January post - it does look a bit happier now.

It also …

I saw a couple of beetles on my Salvia 'Wendy's wish', they were quite small so I couldn't be sure, but I had a feeling that they might be Rosemary beetles. I took a picture so I could take a closer look and it does indeed look like one. As far as I know there is nothing similar that isn't very rare.

I knew that they were a pest of Rosemary (obviously!) and Lavender so looked them up and it does say that they are also to be found on Salvia (and Thyme) species as well.

I was lucky to see a comma butterfly in the garden today. I know that they are quite widespread and fairly common, but I've only ever seen a few of them, so to me, it is quite special to see one, especially as it stayed so long.

It spent all its time on the Verbena bonariensis, sometimes flying away as if to see if there was anything better, but always coming back.

Just suddenly noticed a couple of days ago that a few flowers had appeared on the Winter Jasmine. It was flowering when I arrived here, so I didn't know when it was likely to start flowering.

Lovely start to the day warm and sunny, then got a bit dull in the afternoon. I was wondering if I would be able to scrape together six things, but I did manage without any too recent repetition.

So here goes with another Six on Saturday.

1 Salvia 'Radio red'

This Salvia has started flowering again. I got it in mid June and it hasn't grown much since then, so its nice to see the new flowers.

Taking pictures of pure red flowers is difficult as they tend to come out as a featureless blob. In fact they looks like a featureless blob when viewed from the house, so a lot of that is due to how the eye doesn't see shades of red as well as other colours. I reduced the exposure for this photo and it has come out a little better than my previous attempts.

2 …

Don't often get a chance to see the Gazanias in flower, so glad to catch this picture. The plants were severly damaged by slugs or some other pest but are now looking quite healthy. Unfortunately there is probably not going to be too many days suitable for flowering as it seem that they need both sun and warmth to open up fully.