Balcony Gardening

As usual,  the sudden change to warmer weather does tend to change my daily routines quite a bit - like when is the best time to go out, vs doing various things at home (or doing nothing at all!); taking into consideration outdoors and indoor temperatures and light etc. It also affects my blogging habits, as my study gets too hot in the afternoons...

This morning I set aside for a bit of "balcony gardening"; while the balcony was still mostly in shadow. (In the mid afternoon it's now too hot to even sit there and do nothing.) 

Planting and replanting etc is a messy affair when one lives in a flat - also involving the kitchen on the other side of the building (while the balcony is outside the living room). First  I need to clear the kitchen sink and workbench of everything else that should not get dirty. And when it's all done, a lot of cleaning up and putting things back in their usual places...

My "gardening" today consisted of: 

1. Emptying a box of old dead strawberry plants. (Not the one in the photo, but another one like it, which did not survive the winter.) 

2. Cutting down my half-dead clematis from the trellis on the wall, and emptying that big pot of soil as well - but trying to save one or two green shoots at the bottom, replanting those in a smaller pot. (If I succeed to keep the plant alive, I'll keep it indoors until next spring. I've done it before, so I know it may be worth trying.)

3. Replanting my two new cherry tomato plants (recently bought) into bigger pots; and letting those make use of the trellis this summer instead. 

4. From the two pots of "painted nettles" (coleus) I've taken cuttings for new plants (they usually easily grow roots if just put in a glass of water); and moved the old ones out on the balcony. When they grow this big they aren't happy on the window sills indoors anyway.  

The geraniums I just keep in the small pots that I bought them in - easy to move around, or take in/ out depending on the weather. Possibly they may want bigger pots later.

 

Everything at Once...

 

Summery weather with daytime temperatures around 23C (73F) has made nature go very quickly from spring to summer. Walking through the city park again today, it was almost like wading in pink snow, with all the cherry blossom now falling to the ground. 

At the same time, other trees and plants are now springing into bloom instead. 

On Tuesday, I noticed the first azaleas in bloom in the cemetery, especially the yellow ones. The next day (yesterday), the red ones had caught up as well.

The horse chestnut trees are "showing off" too:

The birch trees are all green now, so the worst of the birch pollen explosion should be over soon... But there are obviously still a lot of "whatever" kind of pollen in the air lately anyway, as I've been having extra problems with my eyes - itching and feeling dry in spite of multiple eye drops; and a couple of weeks ago I had a red eye for a whole week, looking like something out of a horror movie. (I hid under big sunglasses whenever I went out, whether the sun was actually shining or not.)

 Viola tricolor growing wild on a hillside between the cemetery and a nearby street.

It's also dandelion time.

And today I spotted the first lilacs:

 

Summer Starts Here

We've suddenly taken a jump from spring to "early summer", which inspired me to get my old plastic carpets up from winter storage in the basement, to once again be laid out on the floor of my balcony. That is a slightly bigger job than it might seem, as they can't just be laid out there, or the first gust of wind would soon turn them into flying carpets. So they have to be fastened in various ways to prevent that from happening. I have come up with a solution involving clothes-pins tied to the railing, plus my green bench parked on top of the inner one, plus a few pieces of duct tape... Every year I wonder how many more times I'll find it all worth while (the acrobatics involved not getting easier with age!) - but the thing is, the balcony floor is metallic, and when the summer sun gets hot, so does the floor (plus it reflects glaring light as well). But with the plastic carpets on top (old ones that my mum used to have in her kitchen), I can walk out there barefoot in summer if I like, and it also reduces both the glare and noises from moving my chair about etc.

I got two new parasols last year, and I have three "holders" for them on the railing that I can shift them between as the sun moves across the sky. (The balcony faces south-west.) I can only use the parasols when there is very little wind though, or else they turn inside out, or might even do a Mary Poppins and fly away...

Most of the time it's really either too hot, too cold or too windy, or too noisy to sit out there much. (18 balconies on the same side of the house, and a frequently used lawn beneath...) However, today I was able to sit there for a little while in the late afternoon and enjoy the "fruits of my labour" - listening to music in my wireless earphones. I decided to sign up for a cheap summer offer from Spotify again (three months for the cost of one), just for the convenience of it this time of year...

Weekend Street - Spring Market

 

This Saturday was an unusually busy day for me. First of all, it was Spring Clear-Out Day on the housing estate where I live - which is the one (1) day per year that we can just put out things we want to get rid of, and have them picked up and transported away for free. 

Until last year we needed to bring the stuff ourselves to where the collection trucks were parked, about 10 min walk away for me. But now they've made it easier, and we just need to put the items by the bins at the corner of our own apartment building. 

So I spent Saturday morning rummaging through my basement storage rooms (I have two of them) and get that sorted. I have been rather good at making use of the previous annual clear outs, though, and this year I didn't really have all that much to get rid of - and nothing really heavy. - Well, that is... I do actually have quite a bit more that I want to get rid of; but those are things I'm thinking should go to a charity shop rather than just be thrown away. But since there is no such place just nearby, and I don't have a car, I need to organise help with that some other way... some time... (hrm)...

Anyway, as I did not have to put too much physical energy into the clear-out today, I also had some energy left over for a walk into town a bit later, to have a peek at the annual Spring Market. Our annual spring and autumn markets (each lasting two days) are a tradition that in the past used to fill most of the streets in the city centre; then dwindled to only a handful of stalls during the pandemic; but now seems to have grown back to something "in between"... (Still not quite back to what it was in previous decades, I think.)

Here are some market "street photos". It was a tricky day for photography, though, because there were such sharp constrasts between light and shadow. (I had to do quite a bit of editing to bring some people out of the shadows!)

As usual at the market I bought some new socks. (Ankle socks for summer, this time.)

And as usual I could not resist looking for the Impossible Magic Handbag. (I.e. tiny on the outside, weighing nothing, but with room for a library and a fully equipped three-person tent - like Hermione's bag in the last book in the Harry Potter series...) I know I'll never find it, but I'm thinking this one might do for short walks close to home (just to hold my phone and keys, and some tissues, and my asthma inhalor, and some cough drops, and...) 

Linking to Weekend Street/Reflections

 

Soothing Sounds of Spring

 

 

I keep mentioning the old cemetery close to where I live, where I go walking almost daily. Besides being a place where I watch the seasonal changes in trees and flowers etc, I also enjoy listening to the birds. So it occurred to me that perhaps I should share with you some of the sounds I hear when I walk there as well.

 

Alas I'm no good at identifying birds by their song, though - and usually they are too far away from me to see, high up in the tree tops. Today (2nd video), as I approached the graveyard chapel, I was able to see that the singer was a tiny bird perched on top of the cross over the entrance. Too far away for me to see what kind, though. If anyone thinks they recognise the sound, please tell me in the comments! :)

I have a clever bird book that also includes recorded sound of birds - but with about 180 different ones included, when one hasn't even got a good guess to start with, that actually doesn't help much!! ;)