The Balcony Garden

Water Lilies

2009-07-08T13:10:00.004+02:00

Claude Monet is perhaps the best known of the impressionist painters. But he was also a gardener, and created one of the most beautiful gardens in Europe, at Giverny in Normandy. And for thirty five years the flowers from the Giverny garden were crucial to his art.

I did my first degree in Cardiff, still my favourite ever city. The Uni. is in the town centre, and just down the road is the National Museum of Wales, where I spent I don't know how many lunchtimes (admission was then, and is still now, free). Don't ask me what the museum contains in general - I can't remember. I always headed straight for the art section - either for the Pre-Raphaelite paintings or, much more frequently, to see the Monet water lily collection. Where I would sit, maybe just for ten minutes, and look.

Monet produced 250 paintings of water lilies, so it's not surprising that many important galleries have a collection. But obviously, France has a prior claim. The painting below is from Les Orangeries in Paris. They built two oval rooms specially because that is how Monet wanted the paintings to be exhibited.

But since leaving Cardiff, I don't think I've seen one of Monet's paintings - until this summer when an exhibition opened at the Palazzo Reale in Milan. An exhibition which was doubly attractive because it linked Monet's work to the work of various Japanese artists such as Hokusai and Hiroshige.

I have to say that, in comparison to what I'd seen in Wales, the Monet paintings in the Milan exhibition were a disappointment. There were two that I enjoyed, but some of the others left me cold. However, the exhibition was well worth a visit for other reasons.

It started at the entrance, where they had laid out a minature "garden" representing both the lake in the garden created by Monet at Giverny, where he painted the waterlilies, and the Japanese influence on his work. Then the building. Palazzo Reale is a 14th century building in the centre of Milan, now used for art exhibitions. But its sweeping staircases and high vaulted ceilings are as much worth a visit as the paintings it houses.

The Monet paintings, as I said were a disappointment. The paintings were small - part of Monet's appeal is the size of some of his work - and with the exception of two, didn't particularly attract me. But the interlacing of the Japanese prints and the information given on the influences on his work were fascinating, and the exhibition was well worth visiting just for that.

Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) : The Great Wave off Kanagawa

Monet never went to Japan, but collected Japanese prints assiduously and had a collection of 231 of them at Giverny. His own paintings often reflect the structure of the prints - notice for instance the similarity in the lines in this Hokusai painting of Mount Fuji and Monet's haystack series. But most of all they influenced him in their treatment of the natural world - the landscapes, rain, snow, trees and plants so often featured in the prints.

Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858) : Maple Trees at Mama ...

Because, although Monet's paintings include representations of people and towns (including some wonderful paintings of London and Venice), his paintings above all feature natural scenes - many from the Giverny garden.

In the final years of his life Monet said "Gardening was something I learnt to do in my youth, when I was unhappy. Perhaps I owe it to flowers that I became a painter."

Monet bought the house in 1890. The Giverny garden is divided into two areas : the flower garden near the house; and the water garden, where Monet painted his waterlilies and built a Japanese style bridge (though painted green rather than the traditional red of his beloved prints). A third area, a short distance away, was turned into a vegetable garden and orchard. For the first ten years Monet worked on and painted the flower garden, and then turned his attention to the boggy area behind it, across the railway line. To create the water garden he had to get permission from the local council to divert the course of a river - something initially strongly opposed by the local people who feared that the painter's "strange plants" would poison the water.

Monet worked on his water lily paintings up to 1925, a year before his death. He was 86.

Why did the impressionists paint as they did? I guessed long before I saw any official confirmation. It came to me one day in the early 70s as I was sitting on top of a 54 bus, crossing Blackheath in London. I am extremely myopic and slightly astigmatic, and for some reason which I don't now remember, that day I couldn't put my contact lenses in nor use my glasses. As I looked out of the window onto the heath, the world suddenly turned into an impressionist painting. At the time, I had no idea that the impressionists had sight problems, but yes - Cezanne and Renoir were myopic, Degas was gradually losing his sight as he painted, and both Monet and Mary Cassatt, the most famous female impressionist painter, suffered from cataracts which affected their perception of colour. And most tellingly for me, it is also said that Monet was astigmatic. It's said that he was once fitted for a pair of glasses to right his vision, but refused to wear them saying indignantly "If the world really looks like that I will paint no more!" I sympathise. I too am fond of my fuzzy sight. Not to the extent of refusing to wear lenses during the day - but oh how nice it is when I take them out at night and the world becomes a gentle, unfocused blur.

Now that I've seen the exhibition, Giverny has risen to the top of my wish list of gardens to visit. But when I go, I'm not putting my lenses in. I shall wear my glasses. And very,very often as I walk around, I shall take them off.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the following photographers for making their work available under Creative Commons Licence on Flickr. All others are my own :

alex4981 : Water lilies in the Orangerie
peterjr1961 : Hiroshige print
freakland : Hokusai print
Greg_e : Giverny photos

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

2009-07-04T19:18:00.001+02:00

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" ?

Skywatch Friday : Reminds me of ...

2009-07-01T20:50:00.001+02:00

I don't have any particular knowledge of art, but there is one period that I've always loved - the art of the Pre-Raphaelites and the Impressionists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

And the precursor of both styles was JMW Turner, perhaps the greatest sky painter ever. If Skywatch Friday is looking for a patron saint, he's surely a candidate. He painted both in water colours and in oils - one of my favourites is this watercolour of Venice in the early morning, but have a look here for more of his work.

I got to know Turner's work when I was a student. I studied in Cardiff, but when I was home in London for the holidays would often go to the Tate Gallery, which has the largest Turner collection in the world. I hadn't thought about him much recently though - not that is until I downloaded this photo, taken from the back balcony one evening...

I almost felt I should be looking for Turner's signature.

Turner lived from 1775 to 1851. He started painting as a child, and after first working as assistant to an architect, started studying at the Royal Academy at the age of 14. He was fascinated by light, and many of his pictures are of the sea, showing the effects of light not only in the sky but also reflected off the water. There is a story that he once had himself strapped to the mast of a ship in order to observe a storm, saying later : "I got the sailors to lash me to the mast to observe it; I was lashed for four hours, and I did not expect to escape, but I felt bound to record it, if I did."

Turner's behaviour was a bit weird in general. He was a solitary, antisocial man with few friends, described by the French painter Eugene Delacroix as "Silent, even taciturn, morose at times, close in money matters, shrewd, tasteless, and slovenly in dress". Ah well, you can't have everything.

So there you are. My offering for this week's Skywatch Friday is a homage to Turner. Lots of other people have already posted their photos, and of those up so far, my favourite are these from the 7MNS Ranch in New Mexico. Turner would have loved them.

Hibiscus

2009-07-01T17:05:00.001+02:00

I spent much of last weekend tidying up the balcony and sowing biennials for next year. And as I was rooting around in my seed box, I found these. They were just laying on the bottom of the box and had obviously fallen out of a packet. But what were they? They were the cutest seeds ever - heart shaped and feathery - but I couldn't remember ever having seen them before.

And then I came across an envelope marked hibiscus. There are a number of hibiscus in the gardens around the balcony, and I remembered that last year I'd broken off a couple of seed pods to save. And then forgotten about them. But over the winter the pod had dried and burst, and as I was scrabbling around for other things the seeds had fallen out.

When I think of hibiscus, the first thing that usually comes to mind is a houseplant. But Hibiscus is a genus with over 200 members, but I'm fairly sure that the ones growing here are a species native to eastern Asia called Hibiscus syriacus. It's hardy and I also have one in my London garden. Here, there are over a dozen of them lining the alleyway that leads between the blocks. They've been planted in the middle of a privet hedge and several have been trained into a standard shape, so that the trunk is covered by the hedge and the bush just seems to be a round ball sitting on top of it. Others just poke through. They're just coming into bloom now, but very shortly the alley is going to look glorious. The blooms only last a few days, but there are so many of them that the bush always seems covered.

Walking past in the last couple of days, I've also been pleased to see that there have been a couple of bees buzzing around them. Bees have been scarce this year, and I'm not sure whether it's because I've neglected the balcony and have had fewer blooms than usual to attract them, or whether they're just not there. Look at the first photo and you can see one. He was literally drenched in pollen.

Anyway, the seeds are now in, just for fun, but I've taken some cuttings too, which are keeping my oleander and pelargonium cuttings company. Hibiscus is supposed to root readily - we shall see.

The flowers of H. syriacus are small in comparison to the tropical varieties, but they still blow me away. Definitely a plant to find a space for. And very undemanding. It likes sun and doesn't like to be too wet, but apart from that isn't particularly fussy. I have to admit to having a soft spot for a lot of plants in the Malvaceae family - I also have mallow and hollyhocks growing on the balcony and love them both. Here's hoping the cuttings take.

Birds on the Balcony - Finally

2009-06-28T08:50:00.002+02:00

It's taken years, but I've finally managed to convince a couple of birds that they will not be eaten alive if they come onto the balcony.

OK, it's only the odd common-as-muck Great Tit - I can't offer you anything exotic. But I'm proud as punch.

I've had a feeder up since January, but it hadn't been touched and I was about to throw it away. And then when I went onto the balcony one day last week, two tits suddenly flew off.

But if they weren't afraid to come onto the balcony, why weren't they touching the nuts?

Probably, I thought, because by now they were stale. So I replaced them - and within twenty four hours - bingo. I had birds feeding on the balcony for the first time.

I think it's just one pair that come. They turn up at exactly 8am for breakfast every morning. The female is more wary - if she sees me she's gone for good. But the male is more confident. He just waits a minute till I've gone and then flies back. He didn't spot me this morning. I was in the bedroom hiding behind the bed with the French doors wide open, camera at the ready ...

Hope he enjoyed his breakfast.

Skywatch Friday - Stormclouds Building

2009-06-26T00:00:00.004+02:00

Italy has has disastrous weather over the last week or so. Hailstorms, thunderstorms and lightning strikes, high winds and tornadoes have caused five deaths and considerable damage.

The worst weather, however, has been in the south, and although the north has been hit, we've missed most of it. Temperatures have been lower than usual with cool breezes, but the storm that is building in these pictures was about the worst of it, and it brought no more than an hour or so of heavy rain.

The cloud started to build at about 8pm. These photos were all taken in the next five to ten minutes, from the back balcony.

You can find links to more Skywatch Friday posts on the Skywatch site. Of those posted so far, my favourite this week are these photos of the midnight sun in Finland. I lived there for a year once, and the photo brought back memories of parties by the lake at 2am ... Super.

Talking (sternly) to my mesembryanthemum

2009-06-24T10:35:00.000+02:00

Now listen. It's time we had a little talk. How long have we known each other? Five years? More you think? Maybe. And in all that time you haven't given me one single measly flower. Not one.

I didn't blame you the first year. Well, you should know me well enough by now. When have I ever condemned a plant without checking first? And sure enough, all the sites told me you wouldn't flower if you were overwatered. So I cut back. And still nothing. The next year I cut back still further. You just turned brown and tatty.

Now credit where credits due - I've tried hard. I've tried fertilising and not fertilising. I've put you in the sun, out of the sun, half in half out. And still you just sit there. I've pruned you back, I've let you grow, I've taken cuttings. And where did that get me? I now have two of you who won't flower instead of one.

So here we are again. You're supposed to flower from June to August and what have you given me? Not so much as a bud.

Well I'm sorry, but I've had enough. You know I never throw a plant away unless it dies, but I think you're just taking advantage. You're a tatty mess and you refuse to perform. So this is your last chance. I'm afraid you take up too much space for me to be patient any longer. I've checked all the gardening sites I can find, and I'm following their advice to the letter. I've put you in the sunniest spot I can. I'm watering very moderately and you're not getting fertilised if you beg for it. But this is it - you give me some flowers by August or I'm afraid we'll be parting company.

If you garden, you're at risk ...

2009-06-22T19:50:00.005+02:00

Now, I have to admit that the Daily Telegraph is not what I normally read over my morning coffee. And not just because I'm in Italy. And if you'd told me that I'd find myself reading an article from their on-line version and going Yes, yes you're right, so right I'd probably have asked you if you'd perhaps had a bit too much sun.

But the other day I came across an article in their gardening column - and that's exactly what I found myself saying. And ironically, it was an article about exactly that - getting a little bit too much sun.

If you garden, you're at risk from skin cancer. And as Matthew Appleby pointed out in his column, it's something that most gardeners don't take seriously. The lack of an immediate cause/effect link - the damage is done slowly over a long period - means that we tend not to think about it. Not that is, until it's too late. The sun doesn't seem strong enough to bother with suncream. And anyway we're only going out for half an hour. And we can't be bothered with a hat - it keeps falling off.

There are various types of skin cancer. Some are rarer than others, and some are more dangerous than others. But most - certainly the three most common types - are generally triggered by long term exposure to the sun. (Other triggers include contact with certain chemicals, a weakened immune system, and other factors.) And they are on the increase.

Your skin type may mean you are more or less at risk - basically the fairer your skin the more damage the sun can do. When you get sunburnt, the UV rays mutate the DNA in your skin cells. And it is this mutated DNA which years later may start to cause cells to grow out of control - forming the tumour. Click here for an animated explanation which you might want to show to your kids too.

But you can get skin cancer however dark skinned you are - and there is one type which is actually more common amongst people with darker skins. Which means that everyone needs to take precautions. Both to protect the skin and, if the damage has already been done, to ensure early detection in case anything does develop. Most types of skin cancer are easily curable if diagnosed early enough. But leave it too late and - well, cancer is cancer.

Most of the precautions are by now well-known :

do your gardening in the morning and evening, avoiding the hours between 11am and 3pm when the sun is strongest
always use suncream with a protection factor of at least 15
keep your arms and legs covered and wear a hat which shades your neck as well as your face

But I'd add a couple more :

don't think it couldn't happen to you. It can.
be aware of what the different types of skin cancer look like, even at the earliest stages, and if you have any strange growths or blemishes, check with your doctor.
In any case, if you have a lot of moles, it's worth asking your doctor if s/he thinks an annual check up would be sensible. Even if you know the warning signs (size above 1/4" in diameter; irregular shape and colouring), you won't always be able to distinguish those which are merely "at risk" from those which have just started to develop. A dermatologist will. And as I said before, it's early diagnosis which makes the difference ...

And at this point I have to confess to why Appleby's article caught my eye in the first place. A few years ago I was diagnosed with a melanoma - a more dangerous type of tumour than the two most common forms of skin cancer. Not only am I fair-skinned and freckled, but I come from a generation which knew nothing about the effect of sunburn . Until I was well into my thirties I didn't see getting burnt as being anything but a joke - if a somewhat painful one.

Then, when people started seeing the effect the hole in the ozone layer was having on skin cancer rates in Australia and New Zealand, the news slowly started to filter through. But by that time the damage, for me, was done.

I was lucky. By the time the tumour was diagnosed, I'd realised I had some rather dodgy looking moles and had been having annual check-ups for about ten years. Which meant that it was still at a fairly early stage when they found it, and very easy to deal with. A couple of small operations to remove it were all that were needed.

My check-ups are now six-monthly. If you've had a melanoma once your chances of having a second one increase. So needless to say, you never see me outside in the summer unless covered from head to toe with both clothing and sunblock. And so far, so good ...

But to finish with something a bit less gloomy ... There's a saying in Italian : Non tutto il male viene per nuocere. Which roughly translates as Not all that is bad comes to harm us or, if you like, Every cloud has a silver lining. Although easily operable, the mole they took out was in a very awkward place, right on my calf muscle. And the surgeon was worried that if I started walking around too soon, I'd rip all the internal stitches - he'd taken a fairly good chunk of my leg away. So he said - three weeks in bed. Well it seemed like paradise at first - three weeks in bed, without feeling ill, being waited on head and foot, and with nothing to do but read. But after about a week it started to get boring. At which point my son plonked the portable computer on the bed and said : Why don't you start a blog?

My initial reaction was Who me? What have I got to write about? But then I looked up from the bed and out onto the balcony. Hmmm, I wonder .. Might give it a try.

And here we are.

But I'm sure I'm not the only one with a Why I started blogging story. What about you? Leave a comment telling us or, if it's a long story, turn it into a post and leave us a comment with a link.

Oh, and if you nip out to stake the beans while you're in the middle of it - don't forget the sunblock.

Thanks ...

...to the following photographers for making their photos available under Creative Commons License on Flickr : Hawk684 (sunburn) Annie Mole (protective clothing)

And for more information on skin cancer

The National Cancer Institute (US): Non-melanoma skin cancer and Melanoma
Cancer Research UK : Non-melanoma skin cancer ... and Melanoma

Skywatch Sunday - or why I've never been able to participate in Skywatch Friday

2009-06-21T10:40:00.002+02:00

Almost a year ago now Skywatch Friday took off. Just in case you've never come across it, it's an invitation to bloggers to post their photos of the sky once a week - and some of them have been stupendous. Roiling clouds , red and gold sunsets, eagles soaring against blue skies. Oh how I would have loved to join in. But as I explained to someone in a comment once (I don't think she believed me, but it's true), in Milan we don't have skies. First of all because you can barely see more than a square inch of it between the buildings, but then because of the weather conditions. The sky here tends to be uniform blue or uniform grey. Period. One of the things I still really miss about England is the way it can be raining one minute and bright sunshine twenty minutes later. That doesn't happen here. Whatever it's like - sunny, raining, foggy or anything else - it's like that for at least three days. The changeover from one type of weather is slow and gradual over a day or so, meaning there's nothing dramatic to photograph. Certainly nothing like the skies in some of the other participants' photos - like for instance this one from New Zealand .

But browsing through the photos each week, I saw that lots of people were posting photos of things against a plain sky background, so why not me too?

And that's what you've got today. The first is a tree that was in bloom around Milan about a month ago (can anyone identify it?), the second was last night. Planes in the sky always fascinate me. Where have they come from? Where are they going? There are real people on board - I'll never know who they are, they'll never know I'm watching them. Who is the pilot? What nationality is s/he? Is s/he married? With kids? They're all there now - passengers, crew - working, reading, eating, drinking and experiencing. And me. We all experience the plane from totally different viewpoints and know nothing of each other, can have no idea of the experience of the others. It fascinates me.

But I'm digressing ... Initially then, my Skywatch contribution was going to be a one-off post - a couple of photos collected over a period of time and then forget about it. But this month the weather has been strange. We've had wind (rare in Milan) which has brought scudding clouds. And we've had showers which lasted for no more than half an hour and then cleared up. And consequently the sky has been changing at a rate of knots. So I've been building up a collection of photos, and for the next couple of weeks I'll be joining in - and I'll try to do it on Friday, I promise.

Oh Leander!

2009-06-19T17:50:00.003+02:00

Oleander (Nerium oleander). Doesn't it just scream "Mediterranean" at you. Not of course that you won't find it elsewhere - but for me, the image of the oleander has always been connected with lines of rather dusty and straggly trees lining the roadsides in southern Italy. Too dusty and straggly for me occasionally. A bit like buddleia - one of those trees which should be lovely but sometimes disappoint.

But that was before I moved here. The gardens and courtyards around the flat are full of oleanders, and they seem to thrive on the smog and pollution of Milan. All the gardens in our street have them, and at the moment they're in full bloom - I took all these photos in a ten minute walk up the road this afternoon.

Oleanders can be yellow, orange, white, red or a multitude of shades of pink. But here at least the yellow and orange varieties seem to be much rarer. Flowers can be single, or as with the wonderful specimen from our courtyard in the top photo, double.

It's said that they get their name from the myth of Hero and Leander. Hero was a priestess of Aphrodite who dwelt in a tower in Sestos, at the edge of the Hellespont (now known as the Dardenelles - the straits which, together with the Bosphorus, divide Turkey geographically between European and Asia), while Leander was a young man from Abydos on the other side of the straits. Leander fell in love with Hero and would swim every night across the Hellespont to be with her. Hero would light a lamp at the top of her tower to guide his way.

This went on all one summer until one stormy winter night, the waves were too strong for poor Leander and the wind blew out Hero's signal. Leander lost his way, drowned, and Hero found the dead body washed up on the shore, still clutching a flower in one hand. I don't know who it was who heard her lament of Oh Leander! Oh Leander! and decided to rename the flower but, rather than trying to make their name in botanical history, you'd have thought they'd have decided to spend their time looking after the poor girl and preventing her from zapping back up to the tower to throw herself off. Such is love ...

Though my sympathies lie rather with the more cynical view of my favourite Shakespearian heroine Rosalind, who in Act IV of As You Like It exclaims : Leander, he would have lived many a fair year, though Hero had turned nun, if it had not been for a hot midsummer night; for, good youth, he went but forth to wash him in the Hellespont and being taken with the cramp was drowned and the foolish coroners of that age found it was 'Hero of Sestos.' But these are all lies: men have died from time to time and worms have eaten them, but not for love.

But back to the tree : Oleanders are hideously poisonous. Well, some sources say reports of their toxicity are exaggerated, but I didn't experiment. Keen as I am on writing killer posts, there are limits ... Keep them away from your kids, pets and horses, don't eat any part of the plant, keep the sap off your skin, and don't try burning the leaves or branches - even the smoke is toxic.. Check here for general information and here specifically for horses - apparently an ounce of oleander leaves can kill a 1,000lb horse.

Presuming though that you can trust your family and pets to lay off the tree, I'd strongly recommend an oleander if you've got the right conditions. It will grow in most soils, and is drought tolerant. It will survive down to about -7°C (20F), but may suffer frost damage - in which case it will need to be pruned back. However, it needs the summer sun to flower properly. Plant it in the shade and you won't get the sort of blooms you can see here. It flowers off the new growth, so prune after flowering.

They'll grow to 20ft in the garden, but also do well in containers. Look up at the balconies in Milan and you'll often see them leaning over the balustrade.

They're easy to grow from cuttings, and I started one a couple of years back. It did well at first and even gave me some blooms, but last year was badly attacked by red spider mite - trust them not to find it toxic. I had to cut it right back and this year, though it's back in growth, there have been no blooms. The cutting came from the tree below - now imagine that on the balcony ....

Gardeners' Bloom Day - May

2009-06-15T06:39:00.000+02:00

For all of this spring, Gardeners' Bloom Day has come and gone each month and I've not been there. But then I've not been there at all much recently - work commitments and then family problems have meant that blogging has been very low priority for a while. But it's the end of the year - the academic year anyway - and even if I'm not quite on holiday yet, my workload has already halved. So I'm back and will be posting regularly again. Very regularly I hope - although I didn't have time to write, the ideas kept coming and it's going to be fun writing them all up.

But back to the plot, and Gardeners' Bloom Day. Sadly, it's not only been blogging that I've had to neglect recently, but gardening as well. With predictable results. Yes, there's plenty of stuff on the balcony, but I've not had time to look after it properly - things haven't been deadheaded regularly enough, pests and diseases have been allowed to get too much of a foothold before I got to them, and lots of the stuff I'd planned to have in bloom by now is still sitting there in its seed packets. So no long sweeping views of the balcony in a riot of colour this month I'm afraid. Just photos of the individual flowers which are keeping me going.

I'll start with the exception though. The surfinias are super, as are their stubbier cousins the petunias, though this pink one was an unintentional purchase. What I actually bought was the purple one you can see behind it. But after a couple of weeks it became apparent that there were actually two plants in the pot - they hadn't been thinned out properly. And the second was this rather gooey pink colour.

Then there are these little pelargoniums which have been lovely, though they're just past their best now. I finally got round to dead-heading them yesterday, so I'm hoping they'll bloom again ...

The mallow, on the other hand, is just coming into bloom, having survived last month's leaf miner and red spider mite attacks. Not many flowers yet, but loads of buds.

The hollyhocks are nice too, but haven't given me very many flowers this year, and the plants are a bit straggly. They're quite old now - I think at the end of the year I'll get rid of them and start again.

The nasturtiums are blooming quite well, but I'd hoped for more. They've been attacked by goodness knows what and have lost a lot of leaves, so they've become a bit leggy.

And finally there's this little Begonia pendula, which is new for me this year, Sweet, but not what I'd been expecting. The flowers illustrated on the packet are double and don't have the central yellow part - quite different. And there are a lot more of them - but perhaps that's the gardener's fault ...

But perhaps I should stop beating myself up quite so much about the lack of flowers, because looking up at other people's balconies, they don't seem much better - and I have one or two neighbours who are usually strong competition. And looking back to the GBD post for two years ago, I noticed that in 2007 my plumbago was already in flower. So far this year I haven't seen so much as a bud. And it's not just mine - no-one else's is in bloom either. So maybe it's just a slow year. The weather has been strange (but then when isn't it?). Cold, wet weeks alternating with temperatures of over 30°C (that's mid to high eighties in fahrenheit).

But to finish - a note about Gardeners' Bloom Day. Just in case there's anyone left on the planet who hasn't heard of it, it's an idea started a couple of years back by Carol of May Dreams Gardens. Carol had the brilliant idea of suggesting that on the 15th of each month everyone should post about the flowers which were currently blooming in their gardens. It's been incredibly successful, with scores of people taking part each month. I've not missed many - this is my 22nd GBD post. You can find out who's posted this month by checking Carol's blog and the comments left on her own post.

Birdsong

2009-06-12T18:35:00.007+02:00

The gardens surrounding the flat have seen a population explosion in the last few months. Of blackbirds. We've always had a pair living here, but this year there must be at least four. And now that their babies are out of the nest, we're almost trampling them underfoot every time we go out. Not your shy, retiring types these. They were on the path first? Well don't expect them to move. You just have to walk round them.

Strange to see so many, because blackbirds are territorial. According to the RSPB website they will cope with as little as 0.2 hectares of territory. But (if my maths is correct) that's 2,000 square meters. Here, they're living on top of each other. They certainly all stick to their own patch, but it can't be more than about 1000-1500 square metres per pair. (Apologies to anyone who read an earlier version of this, where my maths was way out. I'm useless with figures.)

How do I know? Because they sing to me all day long. Blackbird song must be amongst the most beautiful there is, and this year it's kept me company all day every day. By chance I came across this article on the BBC website the other day reporting on how Great tits in the city sing more loudly than their country counterparts - to make themselves heard over the noise, the article said. Well my blackbirds seem to be doing the same - but I wonder if it doesn't also have something to do with the overcrowding. They sit in "their" trees and scream at each other from 4am onwards.

And over the past few months I've started to recognise the differences in their songs. So, come and meet Pippin and Squeaker....

Pippin has his territory in the front garden. I can hear him from the flat, but his main patch is in a tree just outside my office. Now that the weather is warm and summery, I generally leave the French doors open and he sings to me as I work. He's at it now, as I write in fact. He's an incredibly respectable blackbird. Black and glossy and with a song like liquid gold.

And then there's Squeaker. That's him in the photos. Oh dear, quite a different kettle of fish. Dead tatty to look at, and in the song department - well, let's just say he's somewhat challenged.

Not that his song doesn't have it's own beauty. But it is - how should I say it - somewhat repetitive. And after a couple of months of Flirtpety flip flop! Da da DO dee dah sixteen hours a day, I would quite happily pay for him to have singing lessons. Especially as "his" tree is just outside my bedroom window. I've been awake just after dawn every day for the last two months.

Listen and decide for yourself. The video lasts about a minute, starts with Pippin and then goes on to Squeaker. If you're in the UK or somewhere else in Europe, don't be surprised if it doesn't sound quite like the blackbirds you're used to - like people, birds have regional "accents". British blackbirds, French, German and Italian ones etc won't sound quite the same. And if you live outside Europe and have never heard a blackbird - well, enjoy ...

Yuk - Who ordered that?

2009-05-20T20:45:00.002+02:00

Yuk. As the physicist Isidor I. Rabi said when they discovered the muon - who ordered that?

The ancient Greeks called it hubris. Overweening pride and arrogance. The sort of arrogance you display by crowing in your last post about how the cool wet spring has kept the pests and diseases at bay. So that even when you go out and find a nasty attack of aphids, you're not phased. The plant's in a small container, so it's easy enough to bring it in and stick it under the tap. No problem.

But then you look at your pelargoniums and find this. Bleah. Where did that come from? And what is it? Rust? Doesn't look quite like the photos on the net. Oh well, not too many leaves affected. Cut them off and see what happens.

And then you walk on and find this. Some sort of leaf miner. They're all over the nasturtiums, and the mallow too. But easy enough to deal with - they're quite visible and you can just scrape them out with your fingernail.

But erm - hold on. What's that sort of yellow mottling on the other leaves of the mallow? They weren't like that yesterday - no way. In fact I was just thinking how green and lush the plant was looking. And what a wonderful shape it was since I cut it back. And how stupendous it was going to look when it bloomed. Hubris. Oh, what hubris.

And at that point you start to panic and look carefully. And in the next container you notice there's a grey webbing all over the hollyhocks ...

And then you panic. Because you know what it is.

Red spider mite.

They've done it again. Two days ago there was no sign. And now half your plants are almost dead. And now you really crack, and start rooting in the cupboard to see if you've got anything foul and chemical left over from last year. Nothing. So you rush out and cut off all the affected leaves, leaving the plants looking shorn and gawky. And spray with garlic solution and cayenne pepper - anything to keep them at bay.

But you know it won't work. Not when they've got to that point.

So the next day you're at the garden centre. You've done your best, but it hasn't worked. You've lasted a few weeks more than last year, but in the end you've cracked again.

And you spray. Again.

Plants from the Supermarket

2009-05-16T13:15:00.004+02:00

Our local supermarket sells plants. As you walk in there are two racks with about eight shelves of annuals, plus a heap of bags of potting compost. Go to the vegetables section and you'll find fresh herbs. Walk on a bit further and you'll find houseplants together with the insecticides and fertilisers. And occasionally, still further in, there'll be a seasonal offer - today it was Bougainvillea, in October it will be Chrysanthemums.

And they all have one thing in common - they're liable to be half dead.

It always amazes me how people will pick up plants in a supermarket which are clearly screaming in agony. They haven't been watered for days, they've been kept in the dark in a storeroom, they've been sitting in the centrally heated atmosphere when they're actually plants which should be outdoors - all of these factors can turn a healthy plant into a dead one in a matter of days. The signs are there - bone dry compost, dead lower leaves, upper leaves or flowers which have just given up and flopped. Just look at it for heaven's sake - you don't have to be a garden expert. And yet they get picked up and shoved into the shopping trolley.

Why? Well, the price of course. When a pelargonium costs €8 at the garden centre and €1.20 at the supermarket, is it surprising that people choose the supermarket? Not to mention the convenience. You have to go to the supermarket anyway, but you'd have to make a special trip to the garden centre. And if you're not a gardener but just want something to pop on the balcony, can you be bothered to do more?

But if you're careful, can you buy decent plants from the supermarket? Well, despite all the above I think you can, and I do - frequently. But it's not like buying a packet of biscuits. They won't all be the same quality and you need to know what you're looking for. Dry soil, brown leaves at the bottom (turn the plant upside down to check) or floppy leaves anywhere are all no-no's. But avoid the clear tell tale signs, dig around at the back of the rack to find the healthiest looking specimens and you can often find bargains. Oh - but avoid the ones in full bloom. They may look great now, but may also be at the end of their flowering period. Go for the ones with the maximum number of buds.

OK, there may still be plants which are stressed but not yet showing it and you may not get super results immediately. Or, even more likely, the plants may be younger than those you'd get at the garden centre, and not quite ready to come into full bloom. Here, at least, the garden centres only stock plants already in flower. It's the buyit - enjoyit - andthrowitaway mentality which I've complained about so often. The idea that you might actually want to watch a plant grow and care for it from one season to the next is still fairly alien to the average plant buyer here. And consequently, in the city at least, the distinction between a garden centre and a nursery doesn't exist. The plants in the photo above are only a third of the size of those in the garden centre. But they're healthy and will grow. Soon they'll be blooming just as well as those in the garden centre are now. And I can wait.

Add to that the fact that the attacks of the geranium bronze butterfly have been increasing in severity so much over the last few years that it's now difficult to keep plants like pelargoniums for longer than one or two years, and you have a good reason for not wanting to invest more than you have to. I lost all mine last year - it was the worst year I've ever had. Replacing them all at garden centre prices would have meant taking out a mortgage - and knowing I'd probably have to do the same next year. Unless of course this year I give in and spray with something more lethal than my usual garlic and cayenne pepper mix. I'm still undecided. Looking back over the blog I noticed that, by chance, two years ago today I was already complaining not only about GBB but also the other bane of my gardening life, red spider mite. This year, probably because it's been fairly cool and wet, there's no sign yet of either. But they're there, I know. Lurking in wait ...

Will she, won't she. Watch this space.

Back to the plot. So, ironically, the supermarket is often the only place you can find plants to have fun with and at a price which makes it worthwhile. If you arrive relatively soon after the plants do, so that they're still looking healthy, then it's worth taking a chance. This is a Campanula which I got eighteen months ago in a 4" pot. One of the disadvantages of supermarket plant shopping is that they're not desperately precise about plant names, but I think it's Campanula Birch Hybrid, a cross between C. portenschlagiana and C. poscharskyana.

But whatever it is, it's thrived. It couldn't care less about heat or cold and has gone from being one of the plants in the container to needing the whole space. The photo was taken several weeks ago, since when it's grown even more. It flowers from April onwards, and has without doubt now established itself as one of my favourites. It's been full of blooms.

All the other plants in the photos originally came from the supermarket too. And I have many more which have grown from cuttings taken from a supermarket plant. If you buy one pelargonium at €1.20 and get six cuttings from it, that's 20 cents a plant. (You see - I've talked before about my mean streak and you didn't believe me, did you?)

My local garden centre won't go out of business - I still spend far more there than I should on out-of-the-ordinary stuff. But if they refuse to give me the smaller, cheaper plants which I want for my staples - well, I shall look elsewhere.

And that means the supermarket. So, next time you're doing your shopping in Milan and you see a lunatic redhead accosting complete strangers and saying - I wouldn't take that one if I were you. This one's much healthier - you know who you're looking at.

Happy Birthday Kew!

2009-05-05T20:02:00.006+02:00

Kew Gardens is 250 years old. Happy Birthday Kew. And now a confession ... despite being a born and bred Londoner, I've never visited.

Yet over the past year or so I've been drawn in. I visited their website and got asked to complete a survey. That led to more contact, and soon Kew zoomed the top of my wish list. Even better, at the top of my To Do list, for next time I'm back in London.

Maybe you're far away and can't get to go to Kew. But you can still enjoy it on the web.

Kew is perhaps the only botanical garden to have inspired a song - by Mary Hopkin (remember Those were the days? But this one's called Kew Gardens) Listen to it and take a video tour of the gardens now ...

Then obviously, there's their website - the surveys were to do with improving it. Though quite honestly I liked it as it was. But it's well worth a browse - click on the link.

And if you want to see all the things that Kew has to offer - not only strange or rare plants like the titan arum - the world's largest and smelliest flower - which bloomed in 2007,

but also the treetop walkway ...

the sculptures by Henry Moore ...

the peacocks, Canadian geese, Chinese pheasants and other birds which inhabit the gardens ...

... check out Kew Gardens on flickr, and in particular the photos of whatsthatpicture, whose photos are featured here, generously made available under Creative Commons licence.

And if you're feeling superior because you go there regularly, there's still more to explore. Check out this video (4 mins) on the BBC of the plants which aren't on display to the public.

Happy birthday Kew.

Yummy, yummy - 200 times yummy

2009-04-19T18:27:00.003+02:00

I don't usually "do" recipes. But this is a special post. The Balcony Garden reaches 200 posts today, so I thought it was time to do something a bit different.

This winter I discovered Swiss Chard. I can't imagine why I'd never tried it before - I've seen it in the supermarket for years. Perhaps because the heads of chard always looked so big - and as I'm the only person in the family who will eat greens, buying large quantities usually means throwing half the stuff away.

But then I saw it in Germany, while we were there for Christmas. In Germany it's called Mangold. And that reminded me of mandrakes.

Now if you're a Harry Potter fan you'll know that mandrakes are plants which are (in mythology) supposed to shriek when you pull them out of the earth. J K Rowling turns their roots into babies' faces as well. Of course, mandrakes are absolutely not connected to Mangolds except in my mind - which, every time I saw them in the supermarket, kept imagining the root under the base of the plant as a screaming baby.

So in the end I had to try them. And they have quickly zoomed to my number one favourite type of greens. I've not yet got round to planting any, but this article from The Guardian says chard can happily be grown in containers, so they're on my list. Chard likes limey conditions and is tolerant of heat and cold - ideal here. It's also a good container vegetable because you don't have to eat it all in one go. Harvest the outer leaves, and the younger, internal ones will keep on growing to give a second crop, and a third, and a fourth. Again ideal for balcony garden where space is at a premium, and large veg which are only going to provide one meal are sometimes a luxury you can't afford. There are different types of chard - some with red ribs, some with yellow - which I've not yet tried. But the white ribbed version is certainly not to miss.

So - here are a couple of recipes.

First of all, don't worry about having too much. Chard is like spinach. You cook an incredible quantity of raw leaves and they reduce down to a spoonful. And anyway it keeps - it's just as good the next day.

The basic recipe is dead simple. You can eat the whole thing, rib and all, or strip the green leaf from the central white rib. Wash the leaves well, cut them into small bits, and pop them into a saucepan with only a tiny amount of extra water - enough to cover the bottom of the pan but no more. Then add a bit of salt and dribble some good olive oil over the top. Cook over a low heat until the leaves "melt" down.

Like that, they're great as a vegetable to accompany a meat dish or to eat on their own. But for me, the best bit is using up the leftovers the next day as ...

Spaghetti with Gorgonzola and Chard

Gorgonzola Dolce has to be the cheese of the Gods. Don't confuse it with Gorgonzola Piccante, which is the older and much stronger version - similar to other blue cheeses such as Stilton.

Gorgonzola Dolce (dolce means "sweet") is soft and creamy with a mild taste. It's no more than two months old, and when out of the fridge for a while should be soft and runny. I could live on it.

Melted down over a low heat in a pan, then combined with some previously cooked chard, it's a wonderful sauce for spaghetti. (We exaggerated a bit with the cheese in the photo above - don't use half so much.)

And apart from the fact that it tastes wonderful, chard is also good for you. It's high in vitamins K, A and C as well as containing various other vitamins and minerals essential for health (see here for a breakdown).

So - for our 200th anniversary, I haven't baked a cake. But if you want to celebrate with me - try some chard.

Strange stuff, Italian lettuce...

2009-04-17T17:53:00.002+02:00

I've been planting my veg. The beans are zooming through, and the zucchini too. The Jerusalem artichokes are doubling in size every day it seems, and the tomatoes are almost ready to be transferred to bigger pots. But it seems I may get more of them than I bargained for. Because I've been planting lettuce too. Here's the seed packet...

And here's the back of the packet - as you can see, it says lattuga - that's Italian for lettuce. And there's a handy cultivation guide. It tells me where and how to sow, whether I should thin out, and so on.

And finally it tells me when I can expect to harvest. And what.

Tomatoes it seems. Strange stuff, Italian lettuce.

Images of Spring

2009-03-29T11:30:00.005+02:00

March started grey, cold and wet and hopes of an early spring seemed to disappear. But then it changed. And wow did it change. The temperature shot up, and the sky turned a clear blue. And before long ...

The forsythia came out.

It's rare for Milan to look good but if it happens, it happens in March. As we get very little wind, there's usually a pall of smog hanging over the city. The EU sets limits of pollution (measured by the level of particles in the air) which it considers "acceptable" and allows cities to exceed those limits for no more than 35 days a year before they impose fines. By the end of February, we'd become the first European city to exceed that total.

So thank goodness March brought winds. Warm ones at first, which had the trees budding and cleared the usual grungy colour of the sky ....

And for almost the whole month we've been able to see the mountains - something that usually happens no more than a few times a year.

Soon the cherry blossom started to come out too, but sadly didn't last long. A few hours of very, very strong gusty winds one day destroyed it before we'd had time to enjoy it. Just sad for the ornamental trees, but dangerous for the "real" fruit trees. The greengage tree below the balcony, which feeds the flocks of great tits and the chaffinches which live in the garden in summer, wasn't in flower for more than a couple of days. We shall see later this year.

Luckily I'd been out with my camera the day before the winds came ...

.. and just walking round our block had taken all these photos except for the one of the mountains, which was taken during a walk in a local park. The mimosa tree at the bottom of the road was in full bloom ...

... and the gardens around the appartment blocks were full of magnolias

The good weather and clear air went on for three weeks. Too good to be true of course, and March is going out as it came in - cold, wet and grey. And without the March winds, next month the smog will come back. Ah well. At least we had those three weeks.

Tulips - the second year

2009-03-13T18:33:00.011+01:00

The gardening books and internet sites were adamant : tulip bulbs won't do well a second year if they're grown in containers. They'll be too small, they'll be too weak. Throw them away and buy new ones.

It wasn't that I didn't believe them. Quite the opposite. The bulbs did look smaller than when I'd got them, and yes, some of them had split into bulblets. But you see, I have this mean streak, and the idea of throwing them away ...

So I compromised. I did buy new bulbs, but I went for daffodils. And I just stuck all the tulip bulbs higgledy piggledy into one container. And waited to see what happened.

I didn't get excited when the leaves came through. Well, that was what I was expecting, leaves. But then a few days ago I noticed a couple of buds. Oh, that's nice - one or two are going to bloom. Or three, or four, or twenty ...

For the last few days they've been stupendous, closing up tight at night then opening as the spring sunshine hits. Yes, they are a bit smaller than last year. Have a look here and compare for yourself. But so what? This is a balcony, and they're supposed to be a dwarf variety. I like them small.

And the colour and the display are just as good - perhaps better. It goes to show what I've said before. Containers look better if you halve normal planting distances and pile the plants on top of each other.

Will they go on a third year? I don't know. But I know I shall try. And if you want to with yours, here's what to do. As soon as the flowers die down, dead-head them so that the plant doesn't put its energy into creating seeds. You want that energy used to fatten up the bulbs. And carry on watering and fertilising. Bulbs, like people, get fat if they're fed well and lose weight if they're not.

Leave them until the foliage dies down naturally. This can be a drag on a balcony where space is limited, and is a definite discouragement when success is not 100% certain. But it takes those two or three months after flowering for the bulbs to regain the strength they'll need to come back the next year.

And then, once the leaves have yellowed, cut them off and lift the bulbs. Store them in a cool, dry place and wait for autumn to come again.

Who knows? You may be lucky.

Bonfire

2009-03-07T13:50:00.001+01:00

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.

Help - my tree is dying

2009-02-27T17:45:00.003+01:00

I've blogged several times about my Ficus benjamin tree. I got it about thirteen years ago when the company my husband worked for closed, and we "adopted" a pair of Ficus benjamins that had stood in reception (the only very small silver lining in a very nasty cloud). One died five or six years later, but this one has gone from strength to strength. It was already a well-grown tree then - not less than seven or eight years old, I'd estimate.

The tree has always lived in a corner of the balcony in the summer, and then in the living room in winter. Our flat is horribly dark - the disadvantage of having a building lined by balconies is that they block out the sun - so it's never been entirely happy inside and would frequently lose a few leaves just after it came in. But nothing drastic.

Until this year. It came in at the same time as ever, was placed in the same corner, and treated in every way the same as ever. And then the leaves started to fall. And fall. And fall. And it's now looking very bare and sad.

What went wrong? Did I overwater? Underwater? I don't think so. Is it just old age? I remember once coming across an article on the web which said they only survive in pots for about fifteen years, but I've no idea if that's accurate. It must have been pot bound for years, but it's already in the biggest pot I can manage.

I'm hoping it will hang on for another six weeks, when I'll be able to put it back outside. And perhaps with a bit of pruning and tender loving care, it may revive. I'll take some cuttings from the healthier looking twigs too, just in case. But if you've got any other suggestions, I'd love to hear them.

To click or not to click...

2009-02-24T19:20:00.004+01:00

It's an ethical dilemma. There are several sites on the web which I visit daily and which I'm really grateful for. They're sites like Blotanical which let me publicise my own sites, meet people and have fun. I feel I "know" the owners - we've emailed, collaborated on various projects, and as far as you can tell from a web personality, I think they're great.

But their sites aren't there just to provide a service for other people. They're also there to make money. All of them are complex, and involve the owners in a lot of work - and it's the ads on the site which pay for that work.

Because I want to say thank you, I feel I should click occasionally. After all, it's only a second of my time and if I don't, I'm just exploiting the service without giving anything in return.

But ninety nine times out of a hundred, I'm not really interested in the products I see advertised. And even the hundredth time, I know I'm not going to buy. It's just curiousity.

So whatever I do (or don't do) I feel I'm ripping someone off. The site owners if go on using the site without clicking, but the advertisers, who still have to pay for my click, if I click without real intention to buy.

My answer so far has been to look and see if something really catches my eye, and if I'm genuinely interested, even if only for information, to click. After all, who knows? Even if I don't buy now, maybe I will in the future. Or maybe I'll mention it to someone who will. Isn't that how advertising usually works?

There are other ways to "give back" of course, which don't involve clicking on ads. Like promoting the sites on mine, which I'll always willingly do. But I'm still uneasy.

And you? What do you do?

The Balcony Garden Year - February

2009-02-21T18:56:00.001+01:00

There are times when I think that anyone in Austin Texas should be forbidden to have a blog. Like today, when I go into the blog for Homewood Heights Community Garden and find that they're all out there gardening in sleeveless T-shirts. (The air turns green with envy.) Milan and Austin are supposed to have the same hardiness zone rating for heavens sake, yet I was out there today in my Norwegian fisherman's sweater and padded boots ...

However, even if temperatures aren't quite in the Austin league, the last two weeks of February do mark the official start of the Balcony Garden year. Most of the work to be done is only preparatory, but there are one or two things that count as real gardening. So here goes with a list. If you're a balcony gardener, what should you be doing in February?

It does depend where you are of course. We're having daytime temperatures of about 11°C now, and the plants are starting to show signs of coming back into growth. if you're not that far on, then you may have to wait a few more weeks before getting on with some of the things here.

1. If you have perennials or biennials or bulbs coming through, remember that higher temperatures will mean you need to start watering more often. Check at least once a week - more often if it's sunny. But don't overwater, and remember that the top layer may have dried out while the soil below is still moist. Check first.

2. Plan. What are you going to grow, what combinations are you going to have, and what will you need to do month by month? If you have such restricted space that you can do little else but buy in plants from the local garden centre, then you may prefer to let this develop month by month as things catch your eye. But if you have a little extra space (I have three balconies, each 10m x1m) and want to grow from seed, now's the time to be thinking about it.

2. Pop out to the nearest garden centre and pick up some primulas. No balcony should be without them at this time of the year. Whether you go for classic yellow, a bi-coloured display or just a riotous mixture of all the colours you can get your hands on, they'll cheer you up and remind you that spring is on the way while you do ...

3. ... the boring stuff. Yes, I know you don't want to, but if you don't give the balcony a good spring clean now, you won't be able to. Wash down the railings before you put the containers back up and have plants trailing all over the place. Sweep and wash down the balcony floor before it's covered in heavy pots. And then empty all the old soil out of the containers and give them a good wash too. With disinfectant, to get rid of any fungus or virus infections left over from last year. When you've done all that, you can give yourself a pat on the back and make a cup of tea. Now the fun stuff starts - you can start thinking about your plants.

4. If you're in a zone where temperatures are high enough that there's no longer any risk of frost on the balcony itself, you should be able to take off the fleece from plants which have overwintered, and maybe even move them away from the walls of the house or the more sheltered parts of the balcony. But be careful - if you're not sure the weather will co-operate, then leave them a bit longer. If you do move them out, check them for damage, cut off any dead bits, and clear the containers of dead leaves. Then scrape away as much of the old soil as you can without disturbing the roots and replace with new.

5. Now is the time to prune certain shrubs, like plumbago, which flower off the new growth of the year. Last year I didn't get round to mine and this, together with the fact that I'd put it in a position where it got only limited sun, meant I got a very poor showing of flowers. This year, I've cut it back hard, pruning each stem of last year's growth back to about two leaf buds from the main branch. And I've moved it back on to the balcony railings, where it gets more sun and has always done well. Don't forget though, that some shrubs - like my philadelphus - flower off the previous years growth. Prune them now and you'll have no flowers at all.

6. A few things can already be sown now - some vegetables and flowers which grow from bulbs, corms or tubers can be planted outdoors, while seeds can be started indoors. I'm trying Jerusalem artichokes up the trellis in front of the bedroom this year, and they went in last week, and so did my garlic. And I continued planting my summer bulbs, putting in some liatris and several sorts of allium. Plus some corms which for now are being referred to as Mysterius Whatthehellaretheseus. I have a clear memory of taking them out of their pots last autumn, putting them away and thinking Oh, I'll remember what those are. Yeah yeah. In the house, I've got a mix of herbs, flowers and veg seeds sitting by the bed and waiting to germinate - if they're not too intimidated by my husband's frequent laments of Do those really have to be there?

And that's about it for this month. But there's only a week to go till March - and then the fun really starts.

Gardeners' Bloom Day - February

2009-02-15T18:06:00.005+01:00

I was hoping they'd make it for today. I've been watching them for a month now, at first hardly visible amongst the leaves, then gradually elongating and holding up little swan-like heads. Timidly starting to unfurl.

But we're shy. And then, it's been so cold ...

Too cold. I've lost a lot this winter. Plants which have made it through other winters have blackened and died ...

But it's better now. The sun is shining and we can feel its warmth. Perhaps we will come out and open up ...

There's still a chill wind though, and the nights are cold. Careful.

We will be. But it's been so long ... It's time, it must be time.

And yes, today for the first time it did almost seem as if spring was in the air. The temperature on the balcony at lunchtime was a comfortable 11°C (52°F) even if it did drop considerably as the sun passed over and left us in the shade. But it wasn't so much the temperature as the quality of the light - or was it the smell in the air? I don't know. In any case, it didn't feel like winter any more.

Dangerous words. Most of Italy is still grappling with snow, and there's plenty of time for it to come back here. Am I just imagining the spring? Is it just wishful thinking?

My little cyclamen don't think so, and neither do the tulip and daffodil bulbs which are starting to push through. Or the lily bulbs. Or the agapanthus. Everything is starting to put out shoots, or to look just that bit greener, as if they're slowly coming out of a long, long sleep.

So no, I don't have much to show you for Gardeners' Bloom Day this month. But I will have soon. It's time to get ready ...

Vegetables need love too ...

2009-02-14T13:00:00.000+01:00

Don't underestimate them ...

Peas sidle up, wanting to hug ...

Carrots need to cuddle ...

Parsnips get passionate ...

Tomatoes hold hands ...

Fiddlehead fern gets the message across ...

And so do onions, reminding you that love can sometimes make you cry ...

And freeze your heart ...

But sooner or later you'll warm it up again.

Happy Valentines Day!

Acknowledgements

With many, many thanks to the people who made these photos available under Creative Commons Licence on flickr :

wishymom - peas
Chris Campbell - carrots
beatlequeen - parsnips
Zep10 - tomatoes
libraryman - fiddlehead fern
Estherase - onions
waiti - spinach
kramerhawks - celery

And the potato? We ate it last week ....