Misembryanthemum

We planted the seeds of several flower species early in the summer, of which one, mesembryanthemum, seemed to love Golspie's fickle climate, germinating in huge numbers - which surprised us as the mesembryanthemum is native to South Africa - and happily putting up with some fairly rough handling while being thinned and planted out.

Almost every individual plant seemed to be of a slightly different colour and shade. A rather garish pink dominated, and we had everything through to....

....yellows and whites, but my favourites were....

....the warm, rich oranges.

What I particularly liked about the flowers was their habit of closing up as the light failed at the end of a day, and only opening fully again when the sun shone brightly.

Our asters (above) and antirrhinums also did well but many seeds failed and we simply didn't have them in the exuberant profusion of the mesembryanthemums. The pansy seed we brought up from Suffolk refused point blank to germinate in Scotland, while a whole bed of local pansies appeared from nowhere, seeded from a previous year.

Sadly, the mesembryanthemums are now beginning to fade, the asters are also past their best, and the antirrhinums are almost over but, while the latter two should be with us again next year, we'll have to see if the mesembryanthemums have left seeds.