The mystery plant that I grew from seed, that was supposed to be Salvia × superba has now flowered. There was little reason to suppose that it was any kind of Salvia although I had come to suspect that it was. I've looked through many pictures of different species and of course it is much easier with flowers open as most pictures focus on the flowers.

Anyway the attractive distinctive blue pattern on the flower lead me to Salvia forsskaolii. All the other attributes of the plant match up, in particular the large basal leaves which are quite unusual for a Salvia, and look quite foxglove like on the young plant.

The way the flowers open is quite strange. On the lowest whorl of flowers two flowers on opposite sides of the stem open. The next whorl up two more flowers open, again opposite, but at right angles to …

I had given up on this plant and marked it as died over winter in my plant list.

But today I noticed it had returned. There are a few plants that are well behind where I expected them to be, but at least there has been some sign of them.

This is the fourth summer season I've been here and this is the first time that the Cordyline has flowered. It is very much bigger that it was when I arrived and I was thinking of cutting down the tallest trunk. Glad I didn't get around to it!

Strangely there is a much smaller Cordyline nearby that is also flowering, I've never noticed any in flower before.

Unfortunately the flower was positioned so that it was somewhat hidden from me. The flowers didn't last all that long, but while they did they were swarming with bees.

Did I say last week that no rain was forecast? Yes I did but the very next day the forecast changed and now we've had more rain during the week that the whole of April and May combined and a good chunk of March if not all of it.

Anyway the plants are now smiling and very happy.

So time for Six on Saturday hosted by The Propagator.

One

This is the orchid by the back door that has been here since before I moved here.

I've just looked back on pictures from the first year and it was quite a small flower head back then. I think it is not as large as last year.

Two

This geranium came with the garden, I believe it to be Geranium × magnificum. This is a division of the original that I made a couple of years ago. It is …

You can compare with last year.

Weather

The average temperature was 12.3C with a minimum of 0.1C and maximum of 27.3C. So no frost days, and there were days that were very warm for the time of year.

Another very dry month with only 8mm of rain all month. Surprisingly that was spread over 10 separate days. For comparison, last year there was 55mm of rain. There was even less rain last month.

The month started out with the tulips and daffodils being the main points of interest and they were all finished by the end of the month.

The forget-me-not's are great at providing some early colour but there were far too many this year and I started removing them much earlier than usual.

The Ligularia 'Zepter' that I moved from the back to the front to replace the L. przewalskiithat died over the winter suffered throughout …

There has been hardly any rain for two months now, and no rain forecast for next week either. I have heavy clay soil so it is usually very damp, but there are now some cracks which I've not seen here before.

Here are six things from the garden today.

One

I Have a few foxgloves that seed around, this is a particularly fine example.

Two

I have three Lupins in this patch. The large purple one at the back is a random Russell hybrid from Aldi. The red one is L. 'My castle' (brick red) and the blue one is L. 'Persian slipper'.

Three

Very excited to see three new orchids appear this year. They are all reasonably close together in the left back corner area, so no where near either of the other two orchids that I have.

I didn't notice anything here last year, but as they …

This has now grown to a good size and is covered in flowers. In contrast to the other Geums that I have this is low growing and so doesn't flop over everything else.

Turns out that this is the first Six on Saturday I've done in about 10 months.

There has been very little rain for weeks and although there is plenty of moisture under the surface especially at the front of the garden, I've had to water plants that I've moved or planted and the Hellebore which is in the driest part of the garden near the Cordyline.

One

My Tiarella's are in general not doing that well, surviving but not thriving, you could say. This Tiarella 'Emerald Elle' is an exception though.

Two

I can't get over how lovely this Lewisia cotyledon Elise is. It had a flower from late autumn all over winter and is now covered in flowers.

I made a mini-rockery for it with a couple of stones to protect it from the wet winters. Perhaps it wasn't necessary but anyway it is doing well.

Three

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