Six on Saturday – 10/1/2026

Categories six on saturday, , , 42 Comments on Six on Saturday – 10/1/2026

Storm Goretti was probably the big news of this week as far as the garden is concerned. The Met Office red warning area fell just a few miles short of us here and we didn’t suffer any significant damage, though we were on edge for several hours. Aside from that, the cold spell seems to be over for now, we’re back to rain, having had a tiny amount of snow and a run of slightly sub zero temperatures.

Finding six things to talk about isn’t getting any easier, but that’s what Six on Saturday calls for. Six things going on in your garden this Saturday; post a picture accompanied by a few words and you’re up and running. There’s a participant’s guide here.

One.
Beaver the hedgehog had been the star turn on my trail camera up until last Saturday. He was item number one in last week’s six and responded by going missing for four nights. On Wednesday he reappeared and ate a little food; same on Thursday. I assume he did a micro-hibernation but I didn’t want to disturb his sleep so I didn’t open his nest box. He might have gone off somewhere else, though it seems unlikely.

Two.
Pretty much the only damage I could find in the garden was half a dozen canes on my big bamboo, Phyllostachys aureosulcata ‘Spectabilis’, blown over. It needed thinning a bit anyway, so I’m not remotely bothered.

Three.
Almost every flower in the garden was destroyed by the wind but somehow this Crocus tomasinianus escaped, probably because I have been tardy about tidying up last years growth of perennials and it had some shelter.

Four.
In a similarly positive, forward looking vein, I sowed a few vegetable seeds in the week. Mizuna, Radish and Sweet Pepper are now under way. I would have sown some onions but the seed hasn’t arrived yet. I’m not convinced there’s much to gain by really early sowing, the conditions are just not there for the seedlings to make much growth, but I didn’t think I had much to lose and if get even a week or two earlier crop from sowing two or three months early, I may well be glad of it in spring.

Five.
I think it was around this time last year that Miscanthus ‘Morning Light’ got flattened by wet snow. So far this year it has stayed upright but I should perhaps be ready to support it if it seems likely to happen again. I took several pictures of it and as quite frequently happens, was struck by how two quite similar pictures can create rather different impressions of a plant.

Six.
Pittosporum tenuifolium ‘Nutty’s Leprechaun’ is another echo from the same time last year. I must have trimmed it in the summer; it has new growth through which the sun is shining to pleasing effect. I shall need to trim it again quite soon, before it starts to make new growth.

So that’s it for the garden this week. It hasn’t been gardening weather and we’ve been doing other things this week. Last Sunday we were at the tip of Cornwall where we visited Botallack Mine and the Crown engine houses on the cliffs before making a fairly basic trip down a five hundred year old tin mine in the nearby Cot Valley. Very interesting.
A couple of days later we visited the south Cornwall coast just east of Fowey and on our way home took in St Winnow church which enjoys a fabulous setting right on the river bank. I found a somewhat unsettling gravestone though.

Crown engine houses
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Published by Jim Stephens

Gardener, no-dig allotmenteer, camellia enthusiast. I love colour, it cheers me up. Retired nurseryman.

42 thoughts on “Six on Saturday – 10/1/2026”

  1. I love Cornwall, had the joy of visiting there for two days in 1975. Wish being 17% Cornish qualified me to move there! A few years ago I read and loved all of Derek Tangye’s memoirs about living on a daffodil farm there and realized I had been half a mile from his home in 1975. I didn’t know about him then or I would have walked down his lane and met him.

    I am glad your storm damage was not too bad.

    My six today: https://tanglycottage.wordpress.com/2026/01/10/six-on-saturday-words-in-the-garden-part-two/

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    1. I’ve not read anything by Derek Tangye. I must ask a friend of mine who is very into Cornish writing whether she has anything by him. That far end of Cornwall is quite different from most of the rest of the county, a special place that I really should have made more effort to get to know.

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  2. I was wondering how close you might be to the storm. No wind here, but a couple of inches of snow which has frozen on ungritted surfaces. Do your Crocus tomasinianus usually emerge as early as this? Like Noelle, you have prompted me to think of pruning my pittosporum again, so thanks. I did take some pictures today, but I was really scraping the barrel and I have run out of time, so I won’t post them – I too have begun sowing though, and was going to show some newly emerged sweet peas

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    1. The edge of the red warning area for the storm was between here and Bodmin, just 9 miles away. I’ve not seen any significant damage nearby and haven’t gone far west so I don’t know when real damage starts. I’m very glad we missed the worst of it.

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      1. It’s interesting to read about the variation in conditions in different areas – as a geography graduate I did briefly consider going into meteorology…

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    1. The hedgehog stayed in bed for a few nights last week but is back to doing multiple nightly visits to the food tray. I read that they are hibernating less than they used to, but we’re in a relatively mild part of the country so they may never have slept for very long periods. Are bears’ hibernation habits being altered by a warming climate?

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  5. Pleased you did not have too much damage Jim. Many thanks for the reminder regarding trimming Pittosporum before new growth starts. I shall add that to the list.

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    1. You get a fair idea of the mine visit from YouTube videos. Cornwall Underground Adventures, who we went with, have a few up. Sobering to think people spent their working lives down them, with only a very dim candle for light, with none of the climbing gear and overalls we were kitted out with, digging through granite with hammers, picks and sometimes gunpowder.

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  11. Lovely photos from your travels, Jim. Thank you for sharing them. It is their spare starkness that makes them so beautiful and timeless. It is always a relief to weather the storm and find only minor damage. Reading your account of the past few weeks it appears we both are enjoying a break after some cold and difficult weather. Our C. japonicas are covered with buds, so I hope to have more interesting flowers to share soon. Pickings are slim in January, but at least there is one Camellia in bloom for this week’s Six, and a lovely snowdrop: https://woodlandgnome.com/2026/01/09/six-on-saturday-a-hint-of-spring/ Best wishes to you, your wife, and to little Beaver for a cozy week ahead.

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    1. As I said to Jude just now, the old buildings are beautiful and fitting in a way the modern ones are not. Perhaps it’s because they were built from local, natural materials and weather in keeping with the environment; I don’t really know. Fact is, in many peoples eyes, they add to rather than detract from the natural environment.

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      1. Jim, I believe you are onto something about the local, natural building materials making the difference. They are also very simple designs that look like they organically grew up from the site. Thank you for sharing your photos.

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    2. Just tried to post a comment on your post but it wouldn’t let me. It read: Much as I like to see deer in the wild here, such as it is, I am very thankful not to have them anywhere near my garden. Predictably though, I was actually more interested in the very impressive bamboo it was under.

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      1. Thank you for letting me know about the difficulty posting a comment, Jim. You are the first to mention that. The bamboo are the largest I’ve ever seen and they are taller than many of the trees growing nearby. I love them, but alas they are considered an ‘invasive species’ in VA, and so I catch a lot of criticism for allowing them to grow. They form a great privacy screen between us and the homes behind us and the cardinals love roosting in them. The deer have been a bigger problem here this past year than anytime in the past. I grew so discouraged last summer, between deer damage and drought, that I stopped even trying to find six things each Saturday. I hope to do better going forwards in the coming weeks. Happy January!

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  12. Despite living here for almost 10 years I have yet to visit Botallack Mine and the Crown engine houses – they are so photogenic too. Maybe I’ll pop down there later in the month, there are far too many roads blocked and debris around here. That storm certainly hit here. Hopefully things will be back to normal before long.

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    1. It’s quite odd that some of the most scenic bits of Cornwall have in the past been among the most heavily industrialised. The old engine houses sit beautifully in the landscape, the more modern concrete and steel artifacts are a blot, at least to my eyes. It’s a similar story around Bodmin Moor. Going underground in a mine that hadn’t been titivated for tourists added another dimension to a landscape that I’m sure very many visitors only see skin deep.

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  13. Pingback: Six on Saturday: A Hint of Spring – Our Forest Garden

  14. Same here, the west of Belgium got some damage but nothing compared to The west of France where they had windspeeds of more than 200km/h ! I see you already have crocusses in bloom ! I wish it was Spring already !

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  17. We all love your hedgehogs! What a fun mammal to have in the garden. Nice to see crocus poking up too. It is too warm here at the moment. I want my snow cover back. It is a nice insulator for the garden, because I am sure the cold is not yet done with us. Ice fishing fans are very sad, as the lakes are not adequately frozen to venture out. The bamboo is great – you will have plenty of garden stakes after the storm. Cornwall looks lovely and I am jealous that you can even think about starting seeds. I visited the horticulture greenhouses this week since I don’t even have any snow left to share!

    https://wisconsingarden.wordpress.com/2026/01/10/january-10-2026-six-on-saturday/

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  20. The name ‘Nutty’s Leprechaun’ makes me smile but also makes me wonder what on earth the person who named it was thinking about at the time. Glad to hear that your garden escaped any significant damage in the storm. Lovely to see the Crocus flowers as the ones in my six are only just peeping up through the compost.

    Six on Saturday 10/01/2026

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