Looking after the snails

So there I was last Sunday evening, washing the turnip tops ready for dinner, when I found a snail. Well, it happens. He seemed to have survived 24 hours in the fridge quite happily, and was clearly perking up, so I popped him on my spider plant while I decided what to do with him. And then I found another one ... and another one... and ...

By the time I'd finished I had five of them - and quite honestly had lost most of my desire for turnip tops that night. But what was I going to do with them? Temperatures outside were well below zero, and a quick look at the internet said that snails freeze if they haven't got themselves into a well-protected position before temperatures drop. And whilst one on the balcony chomping away at the plants probably wouldn't have done much harm (they were very small), I wasn't sure I wanted five of them running rampage for the whole winter.

So the snailery was born. A large glass vase covered with clingfilm with airholes punched in. And the five of them - Fred, George, Ron, Bill and Percy - have been happily chomping away on a basil plant, plus various vegetable peelings that I've popped in for them, for the past week.

OK, OK. Like my family you probably now have that expression on your face which says This time she's really flipped - but I am not alone. I have discovered a whole website dedicated to keeping snails as pets...

And oh dear - I find I have to get my act together. I've got to provide them with calcium, cook their carrots and potatoes, stock up with tortoise food in case I get snowed in and can't provide them with fresh greens, make sure they have somewhere to lay their eggs, protect them from mites ...

I'm not entirely sure whether I'm supposed to take them for regular walks - but I suppose come spring a few excursions on the balcony might be in order...

Gardening with kids

I planted some nasturtiums three days ago and the first is already sprouting. They seem to come up as soon as they touch the soil and, before you know it, are full adult plants demanding repotting.

Watching it burst through made me think back to when my son was little and he used to sow "his" seeds and grow them alongside mine. I always gave him the fun ones - the ones which would develop quickly, and be big and bold. I wanted to encourage him with little, instant and everyday results that would make him want to go on caring for the plant and checking on what had happened from one day to the next.

Was I right? When I explained this to someone else, who also had kids and was a keen gardener I got the snooty reply "I don't like to patronise my kids. I want them to understand that nature has its own times".

Well, it was a snooty reply - because this was a rather snooty person. But it stuck - because in theory I agree. But in practice I don't, because the perception of time of a five-year-old is not the same as that of an adult.

One of my earliest memories comes for the time when I was - I'm not sure how old. No more than four because I wasn't yet at school. Certainly young enough to still watch the TV programmes for the youngest children.

We didn't have a TV in those days, but my grandparents, who lived just up the road, had just bought one. (OK, OK - I'm showing my age here. Forget it.) And every day I was allowed to go to my grandparents to see the 15 minute slot on the BBC for the youngest children - Watch with Mother (or in my case Watch with Nanny and Grandad).

There was a different programme every day - The Woodentops, Muffin the Mule, Bill and Ben. I loved them all, and could still sing you the theme tunes. But my favourite was Andy Pandy. And I remember going home one day after watching Andy Pandy (my real love was his best friend, Teddy) crying my eyes out. Because it was going to be so long, eons and eons, before the next episode was shown.

Now, Andy Pandy came on once a week. Every Tuesday. So I actually only had to wait seven days. But for a four-year-old's perception of time, seven days is an eternity.

I remember reading somewhere the theory that time perception is determined by the proportion of that time in relation to your age. So, if you are one year old, a week is 1/52 of your age. When you're twenty it's 1/1040 of your age, and when you're fifty two it's 1/2704 of your age. And you perceive it accordingly. When you're fifty a week flies in the blink of an eyelid. But when you're one you perceive it as lasting the same amount of time as a whole year for a fifty two year old.

Now, I've no idea how theoretically sound this idea is. But it certainly accords with my own differing perception of time as I've grown older - each year it seems to pass faster and faster.

So - when you're gardening with kids, keep it in mind. Asking them to wait two or three weeks for their seeds to sprout may be like having to wait months and months yourself. A real way of getting them to understand "nature's own times" might well be to give them the fast-sprouting, fast growing seeds. The wait will seem just as long to them as it does to you as you patiently wait for your petunias to come through.

Here are just a couple of things you can try now. They'll all grow happily in pots and you can start them off now on the windowsill and then transfer them outside (to the ground or larger pots) when they get bigger and the weather's better :

1. As I said, nasturtiums. They come through quickly, and grow quickly, developing large leaves and large flowers. Get the kids to measure them daily and calculate how much they've grown - great for maths practice.

2. Sunflowers - the same advantages. Try growing one for each member of the family. Let everybody have responsibility for their own - water, light, fertiliser etc - measure them regularly and record the results. Who can grow the tallest plant? Again, great for maths, but also for teaching the kids to take responsibility for other living things. If you have a large age range in the family, the littlest ones may need help of course. Maybe the oldest could remind and help the youngest.

3. Beans - if they have to stay in pots, use a dwarf variety. All the fast growing advantages of the others, and this time the child has the satisfaction of harvesting her/his own crop and "feeding the family".


4. Any of the above, but try an experiment. Let several plants sprout, then get the child to grow one giving it the water, fertiliser, light and temperature it needs. With all the others take away one of these conditions - take away the light from one, put one in the fridge, don't fertilise another, don't water the last. Each day record how large they've grown, how healthy they are. A great way of showing the kids how life needs certain conditions.

Well it is, if you can bear it. Have to say that the last was an experiment my son did at primary school. My heart bled for all those poor, deprived, doomed seedlings ...

Where do you keep your gardening magazines?

Where do you keep your gardening magazines? If you're anything like me you'll have been accumulating them for years. I don't subscribe to any one magazine in particular, but I do buy them fairly regularly. Throwing them away is out of the question (as you may have gathered from recent posts, throwing things away is not my forte) - you never know when the information might come in useful. And anyway, after a few years you've forgotten what they said and can happily read them again.

But if they're going to be useful, you need to be able to find the information that you want when you want it. How often have you desperately flipped through reams of magazine because you know that in there somewhere there's an article on the topic you need? Not a problem if you do subscribe - the magazine may publish an annual index, or even provide a fancy folder to keep them all in. But if you're an impulse buyer?

My solution is to put them all in large folders, filed not chronologically but by month. So that I have all the June issues together, all the November issues together, and so on regardless of year. And the folders get labelled and decorated with some pictures cut out of old seed catalogues, and popped onto my bookshelves.

Now I have to admit that the photo shows the folders from a while back. At that stage each folder covered three months. I've now arrived at the point of needing a separate folder for each month. But the principle is the same. And at the beginning of each month I can take down the folder and flip through all the magazines it contains looking for useful information for that month's gardening. Because if there's one thing that all gardening magazines have in common, it's that they tell you what you need to be doing that month. And it will often happen that a magazine from five or so years ago has an article on a plant that, at the time, I wasn't growing but which I want to introduce this year.

It doesn't completely solve the problem of indexing. But I know that if I'm looking for an article on Poinsettia, I'm far more likely to find it in the December issues than in June.

Month by month filing is, for me far more useful than chronological storage. At which point I can hear my husband snorting in the background : You mean it's a better option than leaving them all lying around the bedroom floor ..

But what about you? How do you store your gardening magazines?

Go on - you know you do it too ...

The seven deadly sins of gardening. And I confess, I confess - I'm guilty of every single one. But go on - hand on heart can you really say you don't do any of them?

1. Thou shalt not pull the seed pods of the heads of newly sprouted seedlings. Oh, but they look so trapped. Surely they'll never get them off without help. Yes, I know that last time both the seed leaves came off with it. And the time before, and the time before that. But I was only trying to help. Surely, this time if I'm gentle ...

2. Thou shalt not dig up your bulbs and tubers to see if they're doing anything yet. But they've been in there so long and there's no sign of anything. I won't disturb them, promise. Yes, all right, I did rip the roots off that Jerusalem artichoke last time, but this time I'll go really, really carefully...

3. Thou shalt not forget to go back and empty the surplus water out of the saucers under the containers. Yes I admit it - there's no excuse for this one. I just got distracted. OK, OK - I just got distracted again. But it might be all right this time. I mean it's a big pot and it will only be the bottom couple of inches which are soggy. Maybe the roots haven't got down that far yet...

4. Thou shalt not forget to label your seed pots - not only with names, but above all with colours. Now, I resent that. You know that I labelled every single pot in the last batch. What do you mean, going back half an hour later and labelling things Mystery and ???? doesn't count? And as for colours - well, maybe I like that bright pink zinnia in the middle of the marigolds...

5. Thou shalt not throw in another couple of handfuls of fertiliser just to "finish off the box". What? The Four O'Clocks you mean? But look how healthy they are. Look at that foliage. Have you ever seen them come up so lush and green? They're a delight to see. Oh .. right -no, I suppose they're aren't many flowers this year ...

6. Thou shalt not try and grow plants which you know perfectly well won't survive in your garden. You're not going to let me forget those hostas are you? Oh - it was the Himalayan geranium you were thinking of. Well, you never know - we might have had a cool summer that year...

7. Thou shalt not - but wait a moment, it can't just be me. Go on, you know you do it too. So confess. What's your seventh "deadly gardening sin" ?

Bonfire

Bonfire. For me the word immediately brings back memories of being a child in London on November 5th - in a time before people thought about air pollution, and when safety was seen as a personal rather than a state responsibility. November 5th was bonfire night - Fireworks night, or Guy Fawkes.

It was a day in the year which I longed for, and as the days drew in and the nights got colder, excitement and anxiety mounted. What if it rained? What if we couldn't do it?





The weekend before, Dad would start to build the bonfire. Paper underneath, small twigs on top, then old bits of dry wood and branches which he'd been accumulating and drying all summer. And we'd make the Guy. Mum would dig out some old clothes which we'd stuff with newspaper to make the effigy that would burn on top of the fire.

Yes I know. It's horrific, and now quite politically incorrect to even think of simulating burning someone to death. But we didn't really make the connection. For us, although we knew the historical roots, the guy was no more a real person than the scarecrow you make to protect your raspberries.

And I wonder now whether the real origin of the tradition wasn't quite different. Apparently, the word bonfire is a reduction of bone-fire and refers to the old Celtic tradition of burning animal bones at the festival of Samhain, to ward off evil spirits. Samhain is celebrated on November 1st (it's also the origin of Hallowe'en). And I wonder whether the burning of the Guy was not just an addition to a much older custom.

The day arrived. Goodness knows what the teachers did with us in school that day. I know our minds were only on the evening. And when we got home, time seemed to drag out eternally. Would 6.30 ever come? Would it ever get dark?

But it did, and finally Dad announced we could start. Coats, scarves, mittens, wellington boots and woolly hats were on in a trice, and out we trooped.

First came the worst moment - lighting the fire. Would it take? Had things got too damp in the last few days?

But Dad was a wizard, and sooner or later the bonfire started to blaze. First the paper would flare up. But would the twigs catch? A flicker of flame - please, please don't let it die. And then the wood would start to burn and the Guy too. We were there.

Once the fire was going, it was time to start the fireworks. Roman Candles, rockets launched from milk bottles, and Catherine Wheels nailed onto the poles which a few months earlier had been supporting the runner beans. And sparklers to wave. Sparklers were the only fireworks that we kids were allowed to touch. Only Dad had the matches, and if the kids weren't standing well back, then nothing happened.

And of course, it wasn't just us. there was a bonfire in all the other gardens too, and we'd eke out the fireworks by collaborating with the neighbours. You set one of yours off, then we'll do one of ours. And we'll all see everything.

And while we oohed and ahhed over the fireworks, we cooked our dinner. Sausages were speared on long sticks and held over the flames; potatoes and apples were set to bake in the embers.

Finally, the last firework had been set off, the last sausage eaten, and the fire was dying down. It was time for bed. And oh, how long it seemed until next year.

Why am I telling you all this? Are the photos really of fifty years ago? No, of course they aren't. But I've been tagged by She Who Digs for a meme in which you go into your photo archive, choose the fourth photo in the fourth folder and write about it. And because of the highly idiosyncratic way I label my folders, I ended up at the photos of when we were in Germany this Christmas. While we were there, some friends who live in the country invited us over to a bonfire barbeque. We started in the afternoon, but by six o'clock it was dark and standing round the fire in the freezing cold brought back all the memories. The photo below was the fourth in the folder.

I'm supposed to tag another four people, but I'm not going to. Instead here's an open invitation. Have a look at your photo files. Go to the fourth photo in the fourth folder, and see what it says to you. And if you want to write about it, consider yourself tagged.

Am I going colour blind?

One of my investments earlier this year was some Calla lilies (Zantedeschia). I've had one for four or five years now, but although each year it gives me a beautiful display of lush spotted leaves, I've never yet had a flower. It's one of the large varieties and the flower should be white if it ever arrives, but I also like the smaller, coloured ones. So this year I splashed out on a deep, deep red variety and a bright yellow one. And here they are. This is the deep red one .... Don't those colours grab you?

Unfortunately I must be going colour blind, because all I can make out is the very, very slightest red blush around the tips of the petal - it's probably embarassment.

OK, they're still lovely and have been one of the things I've enjoyed most over the last few weeks. But it still drives me mad that descriptions on packets are so often false.

Ah well, I suppose life would be boring if it weren't for the occasional little surprise ....

Looking good ...

Even if I say it myself, the balcony is starting to look good. I worked hard last weekend pulling out the last of the spring plants - a sad goodbye to my little pansies - and rearranging the containers to emphasise the things which are now at their best. One of the few advantages of balcony gardening is that a lot of the the plants are mobile. Whatever is looking most glorious can always be bang outside your living room window.

Several things, like the pelargoniums and petunias, have been blooming for a while, and whether they were old plants, new cuttings, or bought this year have settled well and doubled in size. Some of the perennials, like the plumbago and the hollyhocks, aren't yet in bloom, but are growing strongly and their foliage is giving the balcony a lush, "full" look. And in a month or so they're going to be great. The hollyhocks particularly are towering over everything else and are full of buds. And lot of the bulbs, corms and tubers which I put in for the first time are now coming through well. This year's experiment are the dahlias, which because of their size had to go into the "container from hell" - a large container in a particularly shady, but extremely hot spot on the back balcony where very little survives. And yet they're doing wonderfully, and are now coming into flower. Probably because the hot weather hasn't hit yet. They're tall enough to find the light, but aren't yet suffering from heat exhaustion. We'll see what happens later.

One of my favourite plants is the lychnis which you can just see peeking through the hollyhocks in the picture above. I had several, but the majority, which were in a different pot, suddenly wilted. I suspect they didn't need quite as much water as the other plant which was in there.

Lack of some decent weather has held back the growth of the annuals which I sowed in March and April - the only disappointment so far this year. Yet again this week we've had torrential rain and temperatures well below usual. As I write there's thunder rumbling around, and this morning the bus even had the heating turned on. Things like the marigolds, which would usually be putting out buds by now, are still in their seed pots while the more delicate seedlings - like the surfinia - are still tiny.

The rain has also knocked down the antirrhinums and made the ivy leaved pelargoniums look a bit straggly, but there are plenty more buds coming through.

I don't like very hot weather, so I'm not desperate for the summer to arrive. But a bit of spring would have been nice ...

Thanks Leslie!

Last week was quite a week. First there was the article in the Wall Street Journal which mentioned The Balcony Garden and sent my stats soaring. Then on Sunday, it was my birthday and without knowing it, Leslie of Growing a Garden in Davis sent me a surprise birthday present. And here it is ....

An E for Excellence award. Thank you Leslie!

The award originates with Katarina of Roses and Stuff who had the idea of a “circulating” award which would be passed on by the holders to ten other blogs. Which is a bit of a problem, as lots of the bloggers who instantly spring to mind as being worthy recipients - Jodi, Carol, Robin, and many others - already have them.

But there are a lot of good blogs out there, so here’s my list. I’ve tried to include only people who don’t seem to have received them already. If you have, just feel doubly pleased with yourself.

I’m passing the award on to :

David of Snappy’s Gardens Blog - for his ability to post every day and always have something interesting to say, even when he’s working twelve hour shifts.
Patrick of Bifurcated Carrots and Anthony of The Compost Bin for the information and ideas that they share.
Cheryl of My Wildlife Sanctuary and Lisa of The Hummingbird Garden. For the birds, the bees and the other creatures.
Melissa of Bean Sprouts – for showing that little things done by individuals do make a difference.
David Perry of A Photographer’s Garden Blog for the photos he takes – and especially, for telling us how he does it.
Jim of Art of Gardening for the birdsong (turn on your speakers).
Kerri of Colors of the Garden, Ladyluz of Costa de la Luz Gardening and Blackswamp Girl of A Study in Contrasts, just because I enjoy their blogs.
Sue of Lodge Lane Nurseries for managing to keep her blog just as interesting and non-commercial as it was before, even though she’s turned professional.

Whoops! That’s eleven. But who’s counting. There’s no-one I want to throw out and several more that I could add. But I’ll leave those for the rest of you to nominate ...

Easter Bunny on the Balcony

This morning the Easter Bunny came to visit, and left lots of chocolate on the balcony. There was chocolate in the primulas ...


Chocolate in the spider plant, in the lychnis and in the philadelphus ...


Chocolate amongst the cyclamen ...




Chocolate just about everywhere.




It's turned cold in the last couple of days - only 5°C this morning - and her poor little paws were frozen by the time she'd finished (I know - I was there and I felt them. I had to make her a cup of tea afterwards to warm her up again).

Then, when the rest of the family got up or arrived, the annual Balcony Chocolate Hunt began. A free for all with only one rule - anyone who damages my plants gets their paws chopped off.


And then we all sat down to breakfast (eggs - obviously). But wasn't she a generous little bunny?

Happy Easter to everyone !

Mountains, Tomato Bloggers and Spring Minestrone

We had minestrone for dinner yesterday - it's one of my specialities and I make it regularly all winter. But apart from referring to vegetable soup, minestrone also has another meaning - in Italian it's used to mean a hotch-potch. Which is what this post is going to be - a minestrone hotch-potch of unconnected themes.

A couple of posts back I was bemoaning the fact that we should be able to see the Alps from Milan, but they're almost always obscured by the pollution haze. Well, yesterday there was a cold wind coming down from the mountains, and it blew all the smog away. So here they are - from the roof of our appartment block this morning. They look better if you click on them to get a bigger picture.

There's a website which I collaborate with called Rat Race Rebellion. They're dedicated to encouraging a slower, more human pace of life - and in particular, work from home. Every day they run ads for work from home jobs, and I noticed that today one of them was an advert for tomato blogger. Tracing the link back it came from a site called Tomato Casual . Check it out if you're interested in growing tomatoes, heirloom tomatoes, cooking with tomatoes - or just about everything else tomato related. would you believe that in Japan, for instance, they even make beer out of tomatoes? (Having spent quite a lot of time there, I would, I would.)

Tomorrow is the first day of spring officially, but for the last week or so here it's been clear that winter is over. The trees are starting to look green again, and even when it's been cold there's been that difference in the quality of the light that says the season has changed. I spent the weekend continuing my post-winter clearup on the balcony, and rearranged the containers. Even the plants that have been blooming all winter are now starting to look as if they really want to be there, and there are more and more jobs to be done. And it's that lovely time of year when every time you go outside, you know there might, just might be something there which wasn't the last time you looked.

And so it all starts again ...

To-Do List Day : February

I have a ritual at the beginning of every month. I grab my copy of the Reader's Digest The Gardening Year and spend a while poring over the section for that month to see what I should be thinking about doing. I have to adjust a bit as it's based on temperature conditions in Britain, so I generally have to check out the following month too. The official average temperatures for the month are minimum O° and maximum 8°C (approx 47°F), but this winter and last have been so mild that the real temperatures have been considerably higher. I wonder though if I wouldn't have to make changes even if I were in Britain. My copy of the book was inherited from my Dad, and it dates back to 1972. Given the climate changes there have been since then, I suspect a more recent edition might tell a quite different story. Checking on Amazon it's now called New Gardening Year and is a much glossier affair than the sober text I have. Does anyone have one? It would be fun to swap photocopies of a few pages to see what the differences are.

In any case, it's been really mild this year, even for here. No sign of the Giorni del Merlo, supposedly the coldest days of the year. Last weekend we reached 14°C (about 57°F), only a degree short of the January record. And it's sooo tempting. Could I get a few seeds in and get a headstart this year? But a look at the forecast for this week dashes all hopes - we're going to have an average of 4-5 degrees, and it'll drop to 1 degree some nights. What was I saying about exceptionally mild weather? Forget it.

So what could I be doing? It's certainly time to start clearing up, and that's probably going to take me a while. There's dead stuff in quite a lot of the containers which needs yanking out, and those that I can empty completely will need washing out and disinfecting to make sure that any fungus or virus diseases don't get carried over to this year's plants. Those containers which I can't empty will need at least a partial soil change.

I also want to move a few things. Remember my stunted hollyhocks? They made it through the winter with no problems, and today I moved them to the container on the front balcony where the previous year's hollyhocks had done so well. I suspect the problem was a mixture of late sowing and wrong position, so we'll see if they come on better this year. Other things just need routine repotting.

And then there's the balcony itself. The railings need a good wash before I put the containers back, as do the little tables and shelving which the inside containers sit on. Not my favourite job.

The Gardening Year doesn't suggest there's much I should be doing this month - it seems to concentrate on treating lawns, cutting hedges and pruning fruit trees. But it does also say it's time to prune the plumbago. I'm a bit shall I, shan't I about that. I usually do, but I have a neighbour who clearly doesn't and hers always blooms much earlier than mine. Mine then catches up, but as I'm often not here in July and August, it means I miss the best of it. Maybe I'll leave it this year.

TGY does tell me that I can get my tomatoes sown this month, if I can keep them at16°. I hope that means 16° or more, because they'll have to be in the house where the temperature is higher. But I'll give it a go. That will be the first step in this year's attempt to create a kitchen garden on one of the balconies - and having never grown vegetables in my life, it's a whole new ball game. More about that in future posts, but expect frequent appeals for advice.

But if it does stay mild, by the end of the month I shall certainly be thinking about chrysanthemum cuttings. I saw today that the new growth is shooting up, and I don't want to leave it too late. A bit of warm weather and a position backing onto a radiator and they should be OK.

What about you? What's on your To do list for this month? I shall be posting on mine at the beginning of each month this year, so if you'd like to join in just post and leave a comment here so that we can find you.

Oh - and don't forget the Garden Bloggers' Carnival. It starts Tuesday, so you're still in time to send in a nomination!

On the naming of plants

If there's a plant which I find easy to grow, it's Epipremnum aureum, commonly known as Hunter's Robe. That's the plant in the photo.

If that last paragraph had you reaching for the comment button to tell me I got it wrong - hold on. How about Scindapsus aureus, Pothos aureus and Raphidophora aurea? Oh, and as a common name, Devil's Ivy, Taro Vine or Silver Vine. Or Golden Pothos. Or Ceylon Ivy. Or my favourite - Centipede Tongavine. Yep, all the same plant.

I don't have a problem with the common names - it's fairly obvious that each region will decide its own name for a plant and more than one may filter through to common use. But why four official botanical names?

Well, according to the Royal Horticultural Society they're not actually all official, only one is. The others are referred to as "synonyms". And the reason for the alternatives is much the same as the reason for the difference in common names - before the era of global communication, botanists working in different parts of the world would often give "official" names to plants, unaware the plant had already been classified and named by someone else. Occasionally two different people might even manage to give the same name to two different plants.

So someone has to decide which name to use. The rule used to be that whichever name was given earliest won. But that occasionally meant that a name which had become more generally used lost out. So common sense now sometimes prevails and a later, but more widely used name is given official status.

The other reason that alternative names may exist is that sometimes they've just got it wrong, classifying a species under the wrong genus, so that the name has later been changed. Forget Coleus, for instance. It's now Solenostemon.

Again, common sense will sometimes prevail and the taxonomists (the people responsible for classifying plants) will sometimes let us keep the more common name, even when a change of genus is concerned. We were saved from Freesia becoming Anomatheca, for instance. Phew!

And then there was the case of chrysanthemums. In 1989 it was decided that the genus name should be changed to --- umm, er, what was it again? Doesn't matter. It didn't catch on, and at a recent International Botanical Congress (which is where they decide these things), they gave in and changed it back again.

Now personally, it took me a couple of minutes to get my brain around Solenostemon. I typed solestemon, solestenum and a couple of other variants before I just gave up and copied it out letter by letter. I think I may just stick with Coleus ...

Crack the champagne ...

Crack the champagne! Not only is it Christmas, but the Balcony Garden is 100 today. One hundred posts that is. We've been going for 17 months, so that's an average of 5-6 posts per month. But recently it's been more, with eight posts in November and nine, so far, this month. My goal is at least two posts a week, to get to 200 by Christmas next year. We shall see ...

Happy Christmas everyone!

I've been tagged ...

Leslie of Growing a Garden in Davis has tagged me to write eight things that I'm make me happy. So here goes. I've decided to leave out the personal stuff - if I gushed too much my son would die of embarassment; if I didn't my husband would divorce me. I'll concentrate instead on gardening.

1. Early mornings in spring when I rush out on the balcony and find that my seeds have germinated overnight and are poking their little heads through the soil.

2. Finding new plants that I've never seen before - like my monster from the last post.

3. Sitting on the balcony eating cornflakes at about five in the morning in the middle of summer, the only time of the whole day when the temperature and the humidity are bearable, listening to the dawn chorus and looking at my plants with no-one to disturb me.

4. That day in June when suddenly everything is in flower and looking its best.

5. Neighbours saying "How do you manage to have such a lovely balcony?" (OK, not the most noble of the things on the list, but a least you know I'm being honest.)

6. The fact that when I've seen seed pods or plants I'd like a cutting of in other people's gardens, and asked if I can take them, no-one has ever, ever said no or been in any way offended. On the contrary, it's usually meant spending the next twenty minutes having a guided tour of the garden chatting about where they got the plant, how it's performed for them, what else they've got in their garden - and being offered four or five more things that I'd not even seen from the road.

7. Seeing plants which I've brought from my London garden, either as seeds or cuttings, growing on the balcony. And, when I go to London, taking seeds and cuttings from the balcony to plant there. It makes me feel constantly connected to both places.

8. Sunday mornings, which is the time I work on most of the "maintenance" jobs - deadheading, repotting and so on. After I've been out on the balcony about half an hour, I'm suddenly relaxed, destressed and yet concentrated to an extent that doesn't happen much at other times.

9. In winter, looking back through my photos at flowers from previous years and seeing ones I'd forgotten about - like the one in the photo above

Wow - that's nine and it was only supposed to be eight. When I started writing I'd only come up with three, and thought I'd probably be giving up before the end. But now the part I don't like which is having to tag other people. Perhaps we should all put a section in our sidebar saying I love (or hate) being tagged. So I'm not going to - instead, if as you've been reading through this you've thought Yes, me too, then consider yourself tagged. You can start with the common feature and then add seven more - we'll turn it into a chain meme. If you decide to, leave me a comment and I'll come and find out what we have in common.

And now I'm heading over to May Dreams Gardens. Carol posted on this theme several days ago, but I've purposely been putting off reading the post so that I wouldn't be influenced by her ideas when I finally got round to writing this. We shall see if there's anything we share...

Talking Plants

Do you talk to your plants? OK, silly question. Don't we all ...

But do your plants talk back? I found this video on the BBC the other day about a device which lets your plants talk to you and tell you when they want food and water. Check it out, it's weird ... The voices are supposed to reflect the personality or type of plant. So what they call a Scotch moss plant (doesn't look much like any sort of moss to me, more like ivy I reckon) gets a Scots accent.

What type of voice would you give your favourite plants? I have some red begonias at the moment that I'm sure would sound like Julie Walters playing Mrs Weasley in the Harry Potter films. And the container of antirrhinums would sound like a bunch of squabbling kids. Amaryllis would be far more up market and would be dubbed by someone like Claudia Schiffer. And then the roses - well, the voice of the Queen of course. And they'd tell us of the annus horribilis of blackspot, aphids, drought and not enough fertiliser ...

April Flowers

This is an experiment which failed rather. I wanted to see if I could make a video out of some photos that I took on the balcony yesterday. There's quite a lot of stuff in flower and it's starting to look great again. So after spending the morning messing around with the camera, I spent the afternoon learning how to use Windows Movie Maker. And it came out really, really well - on my computer. But to upload it to You Tube I've had to convert it to a specific file type and I don't know if it's that or You Tube itself, but it's come out all fuzzy - both in sound and video. Oh well - after all that work I've put it up anyway, but I'll post some of the photos another time - they're too nice to waste. If anyone knows what I did wrong, I'd love some advice.

Tagged!

The photo is from back in November, but it's one I never got around to posting ...

There’s a game of virtual tag circulating the net at the moment, and as I’ve been tagged twice in the past couple of days, I decided I can’t really get out of it. My taggers were She who digs and James – who’s not a gardener as far as I know but works in EFL as I do, though he also seems to run a thousand and one blogs and sites on different topics.

The idea is that if you’re tagged you have to tell people five things they didn’t already know about you (and probably didn’t want to, but never mind). So here goes. I’ve been racking my brains for things related at least vaguely to gardening, but haven’t come up with much, so you’ll have to put up with some general stuff.

1. Not so much about me, but a memory from school – and this one at least is about gardening. When I was a child London County Council (yes, that long ago) used to give every school child a couple of daffodil bulbs in the autumn and a few candytuft and clarkia seeds in the spring, and there was a competition. You grew your plants in a pot and then they were judged and you got a grade like highly commended or whatever. I bet they don’t do it any more, but what a pity. I remember really enjoying growing them, and who knows how many kids developed an interest in gardening later in life due to that first experience.

2. I used to be very into amateur theatre and when I was at university was one of four local organisers for the National Student Drama Festival – probably one of the best weeks of my life, even though it probably also shortened it considerably. I probably wouldn’t have thought about it except that the other day I found a list on the net of all the past festivals, the performances at each and the organisers. And there I was.

3. I once got vetted by MI6 because I’d been teaching a guy who turned out to be a Bulgarian spy and got thrown out of the country – the spy, not me.

4. I would love to go into outer space and my biggest regret is that by the time space travel is an everyday occurrence, I won’t be.

5. One thing I have to admit – I talk to teddy bears.

Now I have to tag other people who I'd like to know more about – sorry about this folks. So it’s Carol and John for gardening and Katie for EFL. I think it’s supposed to be five others, but I can’t afford that many enemies ….

Beta Bloggers

You shouldn’t notice any difference, but I’ve just changed the blog over onto Blogger Beta. I did it because, not here but for my other blog, I need the possibility of filing posts under categories – and after spending three frustrating hours yesterday faffing around with html trying to add the facility to the old site, I decided it was easier to change. Advantages and disadvantages? Well I did get the categories (Blogger calls it Labels) facility that I wanted, though it’s not as good as I hoped. I really wanted a drop down menu which led you to individual posts, while in blogger Beta if you click on the category it simply opens a page with all the posts under that category on it. Better than nothing, but you still have to scroll all the way down with no idea of exactly what you’ll find. A drag if there are a lot of posts.

Publishing is quicker – in fact it’s automatic and you don’t have to wait at all, and uploading photos is supposed to be easier, although I can't say I've noticed much difference. But I’ve lost the template which I had on the last site and have had to change to another, and I don’t find it nearly so easy to play around with html to get the exact effects I want. It might be me – let’s face it, two months ago I’d never even read a blog - and perhaps I just haven’t figured out what to do yet. But I get the feeling that in trying to create a system that does everything for you, they’ve also created one which is much more difficult to personalise. We will see …

On the balcony, the first signs of autumn are definitely appearing. But while a lot of things are starting to fade, others are waking up after the long hot summer, like these little cyclamens. The trees are still green, but my neighbour’s Virginia Creeper is starting to turn and the flowers on the trees outside my window have been replaced by berries. It’s also dark now by 7.30 –the worst sign that winter is on the way.