There has been a bit of a lull in new things happening but I've now got enough for another six things on Saturday, the meme hosted by The propagator blog.

1 Penstemon

This is one of the best things out at the moment, its been flowering for a while. It is a piece from a larger plant that I planted since I moved here at the beginning of the year.

2 Clematis

This suddenly appeared out of nowhere yesterday, I was vaguely aware that there was a Clematis growing into the Pyracantha but it is now suddenly so big and with so many buds! It is rather delicately coloured, but I do rather like it.

3 Sanguisorba "Tanna"

This is a plant that I bought this year. The main attraction of the plant is perhaps the light green feathery leaves, but since I finally managed to get a decent photo …

This year I planted seeds indoors quite early (Mar 20th) with the intention that they would be planted out into containers. Previously I've planted much later and directly into the container. So the question is, was there any advantage in planting so early.

Now previously it was a different year and a different location further south, so the comparison can only be taken so far.

Looking at pictures from this day in 2012 and the days around about, I can see that the zinnias had just started to flower and the Californian poppies had been out for about a week. The lobelia didn't start flowering until the 28th.

Back to today, and the zinnia have just started to flower, the poppies have been out for about 2-3 weeks and the lobelia have already got a few flowers.

So there has been no advantage for the zinnia, maybe a week for …

So we are now at about 16 weeks for the chilli plants.

Two of the chillies have now turned red. It was a very quick process, one day they were green, as they have been for weeks, and the next morning they were distinctly turning red and by the end of the day they were fully red.

The chillies range from 3-4 cm in length. Flowering has maybe slowed down a bit as there are very many developing chillies on the plant.

I'm going to join in the garden meme of The Propagator blog - well at least for one week. I did do a trial run 3 weeks ago but was a bit late by the time I actually got around to publishing it.

I should mention that I am in the North Tyneside area, so the flowers may be a little behind those further South.

1 Salvia greggii "Radio Red"

I bought this last month so it is still quite small but there are a few new flowers opening. The red is a welcome change to all the yellow at the moment. After I got it home I noticed that the label said it was half hardy, so we shall have to see if it survives the winter.

2 Caterpillar

I was about to take a picture of a Zinnia and saw this caterpillar on one of the leaves.

After looking …

It seemed to be quite a quiet month for flowers as there is still a lot of green. Two very wet periods at the beginning and the end of the month - on the sixth the gravel at the back of the house was partially under water. Can't recall that happening even in winter.

Flowering

There was one foxglove flowering, there are many plants at the side of the house that I believe are foxgloves in their first year, but only this one flowering.

This is one of the Gazania plants, it is the best of the six, at least during the month as the others have not flowered much.

Three Geraniums: the first one is a second smaller clump of the pink one that appeared in May.

This second one started flowering later than the others, but also is almost now finished. While is was out it was by far …

So I decided to harvest the largest chilli to see how it was doing. It was about 3-4cm (didn't actually measure it - I'm just going by others) and it didn't appear that it was going to get any larger.

I could tell it was going to be good as soon as I cut into it. It was very tastly and quite hot enough already.

This is week 13.

This is the main patch of yellow loosestrife. To give a better idea of the scale, the tallest one is about four and a half feet tall (1.4m). This is taller than usual - most sources have the height up to 1m.

There is some of the variegated "Alexander" variety as well has the regular one too.

In the bottom right corner there is a Salvia.

This was another mystery plant. When I first arrived there were just the dead stalks which I thought were just another patch of the yellow loosestrife. However when it started growing, it was clearly something else.

Now that it has flowered I am fairly sure that it is a Lychnis chalcedonica. It is very different from the other Lychnis species that I am familiar with as it is tall with a thick hairy stalk.

It is inconveniently situated under the Pyracantha so you have the flower heads reaching up through the branches. The tree does provide support which it might otherwise need to stay upright in the strong winds that we have been getting recently.