View From The Balcony Autumn 2020

Our front balcony entrance brings so much enjoyment, and not only to us but also to Eli the Cat who shows his appreciation for the doormat every chance he gets.

I love leaning over the railing to check out the front garden. The flowering shrubs in the upper right corner of the below photo are two abelia, beloved by bees.  When I recently did my afternoon exercise walk around the garden the other day, I got to see a HUGE bee all on his lonesome, probably belonging to the Megachilidae family, thrusting its upper body into one of the tubular flowers. 

The meandering brick path flanks the part of the garden situated between the entrance walk and the driveway. The aucuba was propagated from plants already present when we moved here ten years ago. Its evergreen, shade-loving, glossy, substantial leaves splashed with gold flourish in a spot facing north, brightening up that dark corner.

The balcony wraps itself partially around the eastern side of our home. Access to the balcony from the inside is facilitated by not only the foyer door but also two living-room French doors. Presently asters are the dominant blooms from that perspective.

While on the side balcony if one turns towards the south, the rest of the eastern planting with its ivy-covered wall can be seen as it continues into the back garden. Eli the Cat stands guard at various points along the eastern perimeter, mesmerised by sounds coming from the plants' direction, mostly made by insects and the wind.

Once back on the ground, going around the southeast corner of the house brings you to the south-facing back garden with its patio and ivy-covered pergola. The pergola-facing potting room is in the sous-sol (our home is a pavillon sur sous-sol, that is, the living quarters are on the top floor; downstairs houses the unheated garage, utility/storage room, potting/mud rooms, and cellier). The temperature is now cold enough for all the frost-tender potted plants to spend at least the nights inside the sous-sol, near the potting room's window, including the tuberous begonia which is spending the day on the table under the pergola.

It is still flowering but will start shedding leaves fairly soon, feeding its tuber, hopefully giving us a fifth year of flowers starting in June and going all the way to November.

Other frost-tender potted plants that need to be sheltered at least during the night are calendula . . .

. . . bougainvillea, osteospermum, and lantana. If successfully over-wintered, they will bloom outdoors once again.

When gardening most days, I wear woolen hats to keep my noggin warm. The summer jobbies are in the mud room biding their time.

À la prochaine!

High Summer 2020

A fresh spring garden, all bright green and friendly, became a lush summer solstice one which is now becoming a glorious mature profusion but not surprisingly showing signs of wear and tear. Watering, weeding, and deadheading will prolong the abundance for a while.

There are three large pots of orange/yellow calendula and deepest blue lobelia, all sowed from seed, throughout our garden. They did need to be sprayed with sulfur to combat a fungal disease called calendula smut. And they may need to be dosed again in order for them to continue flowering all through summer.

For years now social media images of a pot on its side spilling out lobelia visually simulating a small stream intriqued me, and this was the summer I finally got around realising this clever concept.

The 'stream' flows amidst cannas and dahlias. I love it so. It was just a matter of burying one quarter of the depth of an empty pot put on its side, filling it one thirds with soil, and planting by laying the roots laterally with the flowers placed beyond the pot's opening before topping up with more soil. 

It is now the fourth summer that this fragrant tuberous begonia has graced a small sous sol window sill. I hope it will bloom yet again in 2021.

Pots of miniature roses have found their home in a large tub along with a blueberry bush. In this way, not only does the display look full, when the roses are watered/fertilised so is the blueberry!

Hydrangeas are now fading into glorious subtle tones/texture and by autumn will become much like silver lace which always is a treat to behold.

The ivy topiary heart is being shaped gradually.  I just love it! Sculpting greenery is fun and gives so much joy. The structure on which it grows is a thick honeysuckle trunk that gave up the ghost nearly a decade ago. Requiring both patience and decisiveness makes topiary quite a learning experience.

Beets are putting out foliage which when thinned are added to minestrone.

Green beans are flowering. Soon tiny pods will appear and in several weeks they will be ready for picking.

À la prochaine!

Jogging Toward Summer Solstice 2020

There's about two weeks left before summer officially rolls in. Chez nous, the crop method is the preferred one and not succession planting. There's a push now to get all of the vegetables planted before the longest day arrives. To cheer me up as I sieve compost, wield spades/forks/rakes, and keep recently sowed beds moistened, I recall with great fondness of all the produce already harvested and processed since February such as asparagus, rhubarb, peas, and strawberries waiting to be included in delicious meals for the coming months. Sometimes I take a break just to check out crops getting closer to being picked to ensure I don't miss the best time to harvest, like blueberries. Lovers of acidic soil that blueberries are, they wouldn't flourish in the slightly alkaline earth in our garden. Instead, they do their blue thing in large pots filled with an acidic potting mix. Keeping one of them company is a cobalt blue, hand-blown glass fishing float which most likely made its way from Spain and got put on display at a flea market in France, specifically in Grenoble, where we became happy buyers. One of the highlights of my twilight garden exercise romps started when lockdown first began and which I still do is bending down here and there, sampling a blueberry, a raspberry, and a strawberry.

This berry-festooned branch is just one of many.

Below photo: the green beans are in and covered with horticultural fleece to prevent them from being eaten by birds.  The parterre with bushy plants directly in front of the beans is one of our two potato beds. The two unkept ones in the foreground will eventually be planted with strawberry runners and carrots. The silvery, boxy thing in the lower left hand corner is one-half of the coldframe we got at Lidl just before the Covid-19 lockdown. The splash of vivid red in the lower right are volunteer poppies.

The heat-loving, purple osteospermums were potted up last autumn and brought indoors. Two out of three plants survived the confinement and are flourishing in the front garden. This winter they will go into the coldframe, watched over judiciously, and if needed, brought indoors. But this time, I will put the pot on wooden slats placed over circular trays filled with water to provide humidity. Though they get enough light in our living room, the central heating is a stress. Hopefully these two specimens will continue to over-winter through the years.

Calendula were sowed in flats early spring and kept in the cold frame until it was warm enough for them eventually to embrace the big, wide wonderful world. Their hardening off started when the frame was first propped open during daytime for a week followed by the seedlings being outdoors for a few hours over a period of several days leading to spending an entire day before being transplanted into the big pot where they will spend their time until autumn. Having never grown them before, I wonder if maybe I shouldn't have pinched the young plants in the hope they will be less leggy when mature as I might have ended their flowering capability. I won't relax until I see their wonderful orange blooms!

The beets were sowed the other day. It is such a pleasure to work our veggie beds as the soil has been so much improved over the last ten years with the additions of compost, leaf mulch, wood chippings, grass clippings, and green manure. It's fluffy and a lovely shade of brown. Yes!

Turnips and carrots are the last two vegetables needing to be sown. Carrots have a specific set of challenges which when met will yield a most satisfying crop. Like all homegrown veggies, their taste has a depth of flavour that is incomparable. That paper cone holding up the seed packet in the below photo is a DIY tiny seed sowing device. The seeds being quite small means that too many may get planted hence becoming crowded as they grow in size which requires thinning. As they are thinned their distinctive fragrance will attract a certain species of low-flying, white butterflies who then will deposit eggs which become larvae burrowing down into the edible root completely destroying its comestible value by leaving it riddled with brown tunnels. This destruction is carried on out of sight, therefore it is only when the crop gets pulled out of the ground, the cruel realisation hits, that after all that hard work, there are no carrots to eat.

To ensure that a nice steady stream of seeds are sowed, wet ordinary paper, like from a notebook, rolling it into a cone with a narrow opening. Press the outside edge to seal while still wet so it won't unravel. Moistening the paper and letting it dry roughens up its texture, slowing down the flow of seeds. If any thinning is necessary, the late afternoon is the best time as the butterflies are not around too much at that time. Another approach is to cover the thinned seedlings with horticultural fleece for about a week so their scent would have dissipated. In addition to keeping them free of larvae, they like loose soil which is as stone/pebble free as possible. Our bed is spaded and forked well, but it is not obstruction free so the only variety that I have had any success with is Carentan which has a mid-length and stout top half. If its growth gets forked by a stone, there's still enough carrot for the pot. Keep in mind during the several weeks it takes for the seeds to germinate, the soil must be kept evenly moist. A hose nozzle that makes a fine mist is a way to water without bunching up the carefully spaced seeds. Last year's harvest is still feeding us at the moment; I am guessing that it will supply about eighty percent of our annual needs. Hence just a few months of supermarket buying will suffice to get us to this season's harvest. 

Besides getting all the crops in before the solstice, I also try to get any desired cuttings from existing evergreen stock started. After getting dipped in growth hormone, planted in small pots, and thoroughly watered, they are drapped with clear plastic bags and kept under the pergola. When new growth is detected then they will be placed in the sun. If they do not reach nursery-bed transplantation size before winter, then they will go into the coldframe. All that condensation inside their little plastic homes is a comforting sight because it means until their roots form, they will still receive moisture through their leaves. A ton of laurel and heather cuttings already have been propagated leaving Leyland cypress, ivy, and rosemary to be done. Whew!

À la prochaine!