Six on Saturday: What’s New?

The first ‘Tête-à-tête’ in the streamside grass for a start (although if you look closely it is more weed than grass these days) above, and one of several recently-emerged Clematis armandii ‘Snowdrift’ blooms below:

In the Coop, tiny purple buds of climber Hardenbergia violacea ‘Happy Wanderer’ are adding colour alongside the early spring bulbs – sadly, they really are tiny, and this little cluster of blooms is no more than an inch or so across, creating minimal impact despite their cute prettiness.

We all know how much Jim of Garden Ruminations, honourable host of this Saturday meme, likes his camellias, so my solitary bloom is relatively insignificant compared to his collection. Nevertheless, it elicited a little squeal when I saw this unexpected flower on neglected Camellia ‘Nobilissima’:

Primroses regularly appear at different times of year, but rarely in almost pristine clumps like those that bloom in early spring, which is what it is beginning to feel like now:

Comfirming those seasonal thoughts, I have spied several buds on spring-flowering Clematis alpina ‘Constance’. I removed all the early flowering clematis from the colonnade last year to allow the later C viticella free rein, but found spaces for my favourites in other parts of the garden. Constance was the first clematis I ever added to the garden, although the current plant is not the original.

Vying with today’s Six for inclusion were several other harbingers of spring, especially emerging foliage, and daily rambles are becoming longer and slower, with my powers of observation increasingly challenged. As always, it is a joy to be in the garden.