The Balcony Garden

Don't throw those chrysanthemums away - well, not yet anyway...

2009-11-07T19:43:00.004+01:00

Chrysanthemums have to be THE plant of the late autumn. Just when everything else is dying off, they burst into flower and - depending on what type you've got and how they've been treated - will treat you to a mass of small blooms or wow you with a smaller number of much larger ones. Not to mention a range of colours from reddy brown through yellow to creamy white - and even pink and purple, colours which are less common here. And all the different petal shapes ...

Where does the name come from? In 1753 Karl Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist who first started to classify plants and animals logically, combined the Greek word chrysos, meaning gold, with anthemon, meaning flower. And despite attempts by recent taxonomists to change the plant's classification, the name has stuck.

In Italy the shops start to fill up with chrysanths in early October. Forget lilies, here chrysanthemums are the flower of the dead - the plant you take to the graves of your loved ones on November 1st. Buy them at the beginning of the month and they're cheap. By Hallowe'en the price has quadrupled.

Being the flower of the dead, it's not a flower that most people have on their balconies here. But I wouldn't be without mine. Especially my little yellow ones. I've had them for years and they go on and on and on ... If you've bought a pot of chrysanths for your balcony this year, don't even think of throwing them away after they've stopped flowering.

They do need a bit of care though. First of all, cut of the dead flower heads as soon as - well, as soon as they're dead. If you're in a fairly cold zone, they'll need covering. We have a Hardiness Zone 8 type climate - the temperature may drop well below freezing in January. Mine get moved back towards the walls of the house and covered in fleece. And don't overwater during the winter.

By March you'll notice that new shoots are starting to come up from near the base of the old plant. These are what you want for next autumn's blooms. Take them off the plant when they're about 2.5 ins long, remove the bottom two leaves and cut vertically across the stem just below the leaf joint. Dip the end in hormone rooting powder and pop them into some potting mix in a propagator to root. Keep them in a warm place.

Well, that's what the books say. But quite honestly I find it works just as well without the hormone rooting powder and with ordinary potting soil. And I don't usually bother with a propagator - quite often I'll put them straight into the pots where I want them to grow. But then, it can be quite warm here in March. But anyway, they're one of the easiest plants to root from cuttings that I know. You may lose a few this way (so take more than you expect to need), but most will be quite happy.

And then you can throw the old plant away. You could try keeping it, but the results aren't usually as good as the first year.

Once the cuttings have rooted, keep in mind that chrysanths like soil which is rich in organic matter and neither very acid nor very alkaline. You'll also need to decide whether or not to "stop" them in April. "Stopping" means pinching out the growing shoot of the plant to encourage it to put out side shoots. If you stop, you'll end up with a myriad of small flowers, If you don't, you'll get a tall stem and one, much larger flower. As you can see from the photos, I stop ...

I have a sneaking affection for these little yellow ones. Yes, I've tried others and I'm the first to admit that these aren't half as elegant as many of the larger ones . I've got some large white ones in bud which I hope will flower soon, and a couple of years ago I had some nice red-brown ones. But nothing does quite so well as these do. They don't seem to mind the heat we have all summer, they shrug off pest attacks, and don't complain at all when they're left to the hideous over-watering that my plant-sitters inflict on them when I'm away. I don't care if the neighbours do think I'm weird - my chrysanths are here to stay.

Quite possibly the ugliest plant I've ever seen...

2009-10-27T11:09:00.002+01:00

I mentioned a few posts back that weeds aren't a particular problem when you balcony garden, but that things do sometimes float in on the wind and seed themselves in the containers. And sometimes they can be quite interesting plants - so when I saw this one sprouting at the beginning of the summer, I popped it into a pot to see what would develop.

What is it? No idea - some sort of succulent it seems. I was sure I'd never seen it before - it's not something I've noticed growing wild, but nor is it anything I've ever seen in a garden.

Well - not till a few days ago that is, when I was walking through the garden at the front of the house and found this, crawling its way up a lamp post ....

Quite possibly the ugliest plant I've ever seen.

How did it get there? That's not a plant that's been deliberated over in a condominium assembly for at least three hours and until blood has been spilled (mandatory for any decisions regarding the condominium). Someone has had the thing growing on their balcony and, in desperation, crept into the garden at dead of night and stuck it up the lamp post. Look how awkward it looks - that, I'm sure, is no natural climber.

To me, it looks as if it should be snaking its way insidiously across the ground. Did someone actually go out and buy it (worthy of a post on Great Gardening Mistakes of the Century) and thus infect my balcony, or did it float in on the wind to them too? I can imagine hundreds of the things spreading through the garden, choking the shrubs and the trees, and then reaching unstoppably for the buildings. We'll all wake up one morning murdered in our beds, tendrils sliding through the shutters and wound mercilessly around our throats.

Because I'm sure it's conscious and I don't think it's from this planet. Who said that intelligent life must be animal? This is something out of The Day of the Triffids or The War of the Worlds. It's here to take over, to wipe us out ...

And I'm growing one. No question that it's the same. Compare the close-up below with the photo of my little one in its pot. Should I kill mine now, bringing upon myself the certain wrath of its kin, or should I go on nurturing it, in the hope that when the time comes I'll be spared and kept on as some sort of servant? They'll need someone to bring the fertiliser, for heaven's sake.

The monster in the garden is already starting to evolve. Did the person who planted it there think he was rendering it harmlesss by tying it to a stake? He's only increased its rage, and sooner or later we're all going to pay. Look at those little bubble things on the tips of the "teeth" on the leaves. Spores which spread silently on the wind ...

Alert your Neighbourhood Watch. Write to your Congressperson. Notify NASA. But don't ever say I didn't warn you...

A sorry sight ...

2009-10-24T10:05:00.005+02:00

I've always had pelargoniums on the balcony. Common as muck they may be, but in full bloom they're glorious. And with a bit of protection they will not only over-winter, and but also sometimes keep on flowering . If you were reading this blog a few years ago, you'll know that I had one container of salmon-pink zonal pelargoniums that went on for two and half years - in all that time, even in January when it was wrapped up in fleece, there wasn't a moment when it wasn't in bloom.

But each year it got progressively more difficult to keep them alive through the summer. And last year I lost the lot.

So this year I replaced them all. Zonals, ivy-leafed, regals .... Here they are in May this year...

And I've lost the lot again.

Why? Again if you've been reading regularly for a few years, you'll guess. It's this ...

Cacyreus Marshalli, or the Geranium Bronze Butterfly. It's always been a problem, but for the last couple of years it's been impossible to keep the plants alive.

A quick recap for those of you who aren't familiar with it. Native to S.Africa (as are pelargoniums), it was introduced to S. Europe about twenty years ago and has been spreading like wildfire ever since. It's been in Italy since 1996, and is now posing a severe threat to commercial pelargonium cultivation - apart from anything else, because people are starting to avoid buying the plants, knowing they won't survive.

Why does it do so much damage? The larvae of the butterfly don't feed on the leaves. They burrow right into the stems and eat the plant from the inside out, killing it. If you can spot the tell-tale holes you can sometimes cut off the affected part - but over the season you frequently end up cutting back the whole plant.

And go away for a few weeks, like I always have to in the summer (...have to? Only a gardener could feel like that about a holiday ) and you come back to this ...

What can be done about them? There don't seem to be many organic options. One of the studies recommends the "natural" insecticide Bacillus thuringiensis Kurstaki - but don't ask me where I'd get hold of it. (Wonder how many times longer than the bacteria the name is?) There is also an insect with the equally wonderful name of Macrolophus caliginosus Wagner, which feeds off the eggs and hatchling larvae - but ditto, and would it stay on the balcony anyway? Another source suggested companion planting. Highly aromatic plants like lavender, mint and thyme are supposed to discourage the butterfly. Well, I can try - but I have my doubts. By pure chance I did have mint growing fairly near the pelargoniums this year. Not close enough maybe ...

Other than that, it seems there are only two choices - swamp the plants with noxious chemicals, or give up on pelargoniums all together. Don't like the first, and don't want to do the second. But it seems the only other option is to invite yet another massacre ...

Useful Links

Lupi and Zucker, The butterfly cacyreus marshalli in Northern Italy and susceptibility of commercial cultivars of pelargonium.

Regione del Veneto, Il licenide dei gerani

Roll on November ...

2009-10-18T13:00:00.008+02:00

This was the week that the temperature dropped 10°C overnight. Last Sunday I went to the garden centre wearing only a T-shirt (well, no - I had trousers on too, but you know what I mean...) Today I'm sitting at home with the heating on and I've still had to put on a long sleeved jumper (that's a sweater for anyone who lives west of County Kerry).

It started with two days of heavy winds. Wind is unusual in Milan, but very welcome - it blows away the pall of smog that usually envelops the city. And last week, the Foehn was blowing.

Now, I'm sure I've posted about the Foehn before - but I can't for the life of me find the post. Was it one I started and then deleted? Who knows. But apologies if you've read this before.

The Foehn is a wind which occurs around a mountain range. It has different names in different countries - the Helm wind in the UK, the Chinook in the US and Canada, the Bergwind in South Africa - and many, many more. Don't ask me to explain the details - it's something about the "different adiabatic lapse rates of moist and dry air." Yeah, well - perhaps that's why I deleted the post ...

It's a strong, gusty wind which in Milan usually brings down branches from trees and often the trees themselves. But it's a warm wind - when the Foehn blows the temperature usually rises.

So it was even more of a shock to wake up at five the next morning, freezing to death. The temperature had plummeted overnight, and the single blanket that we'd been using just wasn't enough any more.

The rest of the week has been a constant rush to catch up. Winter clothes have come out of the cupboards, plants have come in from the balcony (yes, don't worry - I'll get back to the plants in a minute), and on trips to the supermarket I'm no longer stocking up with salad but with beans, lentils, and other stuff for good hearty soups and casseroles.

The plants on the balcony don't like it any more than we do. The photos above are from ten days ago - the plumbago was still in full bloom, the sunflower was developing a good crop of seed heads and the petunias and marigolds were appreciating the cooler weather and looking better than they had in August. Now they're looking considerably shell shocked.

This is the sunflower today. I'll spare you the others - this is a family blog.

And ever the optimist in the garden, in the last few weeks, with temperatures around 20°C - that's 68°F - I was still doing some late sowing. Now with temperatures around 10°C/50°F, I suspect I was wasting my time.

But every season has its advantages and as one set of plants dies, another always takes over. Look at that photo of the sunflower again. See the chrysanths behind it? And see how many buds? Roll on November ...

When Pets Become Pests ...

2009-10-14T15:43:00.006+02:00

It's not every day that a London bird makes the evening news on Italian TV. But the other night there was a short feature on the bird which is probably now the most frequently seen visitor in my London garden - the rose ringed parakeet.

I posted about them two years ago, the last time I was in London, talking about how they are increasing exponentially and the problems they are causing. This year they were even more in evidence. The population is now generally supposed to be about 30,000 with the RSPB predicting 50,000 by 2010 - all descendants of escaped pets (or if you believe some reports, of a flock which escaped from Shepperton Studios during the filming of the Bogart/Hepburn movie The African Queen. Whaat?! You mean that river was really the Thames??)

I always look forward to seeing them in the garden when I go back. They're great to watch : colourful and very funny. They're clowns who give a circus performance every time they fly in. But I can see why - and this is what got them onto the Italian news - they have now officially been listed as vermin. Which means that they can now legally be killed, under general license, by landowners who can show that they are damaging their property.

And they do cause damage, as my neighbour - who has four or five fruit trees in her garden knows. I doubt if she got a single item of fruit this year which didn't have a large lump taken out of it.

OK, maybe if they're in your garden you put up with it. I would, and my neighbour didn't seem particularly bothered. Even if she was, the new law certainly doesn't give householders carte blanche to start killing the birds. The general license list specifies particular reasons for which specific birds may be killed, including damage to crops, health and safety risks, and threats to other wildlife. Anyone killing a bird on the list without one of these reasons faces a £5,000 fine or a six-month prison sentence. For the ring-necked parakeets, one of the reasons accepted is crop damage. Fruit trees in the back garden may not count as "crops", but the birds are causing considerable problems for commercial fruit growers in Kent and other areas, and I can well understand that they might consider culling.

The second justification specified is because of the threat to other wildlife. The parakeets have also been accused of causing a vast reduction in the numbers of other species of birds. They nest in hollow trees and have simply moved into all the available space, leaving nothing for the other species. Controversy rages about how true this is, but something is clearly displacing the tree-nesters. I said two years ago that the woodpeckers and nuthatches seemed to have disappeared from the garden. But at that time the owls were still holding their own. This year there were none, for the first time ever since I was a child.

So the parakeets have joined pigeons, crows and magpies - the last two also clearly on the increase from the numbers I saw - on the list of official pests, together with a couple of other new additions, such as the Canada Goose - again regarded as a danger to crops, and also a public health and safety problem.

The London Wildlife Trust has opposed the placing of both birds on the list, while the RSPB has suggested that there is a need for more evidence of the impact the parakeets have outside urban areas. And amongst Londoners, opinion is divided. The parakeets were once called "the grey squirrel of the skies" - an apt description. Like the grey squirrels, they're a non-native species which has become dominant, displacing native species. And like the grey squirrel you either love them or you hate them.

Me? Well, I'm the one who feels guilty if she kills a few red spider mite, so you can imagine ... But as I said in a recent post, I love seeing grey squirrels in the garden - and I guess that goes for the variety from the skies too.

Explore some more ...

How do parakeets survive in the UK? BBC Website

Is it time to start culling parakeets? The Guardian

Britains's naturalised parrot now officially a pest The Independent

Statement on Monk and Ring-necked Parakeets Natural England

No open season on shooting parakeets, says RSPB Wandsworth Guardian

Are parakeets threatened with control? London Wildlife Trust

Weeds...

2009-10-10T13:03:00.002+02:00

One of the advantages of balcony gardening is that you don't get weeds. Not having a garden means that, of necessity you're using bought - and sterilised - compost, and though the odd thing will float in on the wind, it's relatively rare. Tip the soil into your container, pop in your plants, and that's it for the season. So you get to be a bit ingenuous about weeds ...

One of the jobs I worked hardest on when I was in London in July and August was clearing and replanting the flowerbeds - I found them completely overgrown with grass and borage. I didn't even think of it as "weeding". The beds just had to be completely dug over and everything pulled out.

And then, I started planting. Bulbs galore went in, but I also scoured the local garden centres for special offers, so that I could get as much planted as possible on a budget that was rapidly being eaten up by the repairs that needed doing on the house.

So when I left at the end of August, the beds were looking - well, a bit bare, but I hoped the bulbs would take care of that. And there were new roses, pansies, lavender bushes and other things dotted around.

Two weeks later I was back. And walked into a sea of green - which certainly had nothing to do with the bulbs. The garden was covered with one particular weed, which try as I might I can't find the name of (?). I can't say I wasn't expecting it - but the speed with which it had sprung up was incredible. Plant seeds that you want to have in the garden, and after two weeks they're only just thinking of germinating. But these had just yelled Yippee! Bare soil and sprung up in their thousands. Helped along, of course, by a bit of grass and an entirely new crop of borage.

Luckily, they're a weed which is very easily dealt with. Grab a handful and pull, or hoe. They come out with no problem. So a few hours of hard work later, the beds were looking bare but pristine again. And even more luckily, they'd not had time to seed. I'm hoping that all the seeds that my August digging had brought to the surface had germinated immediately, so that I was able to get the lot in one fell swoop.

I can hear you laughing hysterically from here. No, I don't really believe it either. I'll be back in London in a few weeks time, and I'm sure I'll find the beds covered again. But if I get rid of that lot, and the next ones that come up are killed off by the winter weather, then maybe by next year things will be better. Please ...?

Berries

2009-10-06T13:45:00.007+02:00

When I left England, there wasn't much in flower in the garden but it was full of berries. Red ones, orange ones, purple ones and white ones .... everywhere you turned there was a mass of colour. Folklore would have it that an abundance of berries in autumn heralds a hard winter, and if my garden is anything to go by, it's going to be a tough one ...

The purple ones were the elderberries. Strictly speaking these aren't in my garden, as the tree is actually in the park behind. But the branches have spread over my fence. In the spring the flowers must have been wonderful, and now there's a mass of berries. If I were there permanently, I'd have used them to make wine ... or a pie ... or a sauce. Just google elderberries recipe and see what comes up. I rather liked the look of this one from The Times Online.

Sadly, the elderberry tree is leaning on the fence so heavily that it's bringing the fence down, and I've had to ask the council to lop it. I did ask them to take away the minimum possible though ...

Then there are the snowberries. Snowberry is a scrubby little bush which has the extremely inflated name of Symphoricarpos albus - always sounds like something out of Harry Potter to me. Not a shrub I'd really recommend - invasive, and the leaves and small pink flowers are not desperately attractive. But the berries are nice in autumn. Mine self seeded years ago, and for years I toiled away trying to dig it up. But it always sprang straight back and in the end I gave up. However, it does have the virtue that it's just about the only thing which will grow in the shade of the cotoneaster tree.

Not sure what variety this is, and can't for the life of me remember what its flowers are like. Sadly, I've not seen the garden in spring for over twenty five years. But it's always covered in berries in the autumn.

There's another cotoneaster in the garden as well - cotoneaster horizontalis - a much smaller shrub, but if possible with even more berries.

Cotoneaster is a word I have a mental block about. I have to look it up every single time I want to talk about the plant. It's odd, because that it's not that I don't know what the plant itself is - I do. But the name that always comes to mind is pyrocantha, despite the fact that I know perfectly well that it's not. So that's what I tend to call it to myself : the not-pyrocantha plant.

I do have a real pyrocantha though as part of my front hedge, currently covered in yellowy-orange berries.

I curse it all summer when I have to cut the hedge - it's full of thorns which get through even the thickest gardening gloves. But the show in autumn makes it worthwhile.

So - if we are in for a hard winter, at least the birds will have something to eat. If you're trying to grow a wildlife garden, they're all plants to include. Different species feed off them all - though snowberries (which are poisonous to humans incidentally) are preferred by pheasants, grouse and other similar species. Not many of them in a London garden. But blackbirds are supposed to love the pyrocantha berries and the elderberries and cotoneaster seem generally popular. At the moment, with food abundant, they're being ignored. But once the fruit trees are bare, and there are fewer seeds and insects around, the situation will change. In particular, I suspect we'll soon be a favourite haunt of the rose-ringed parakeets. But more of them in another post...

Hummingbird Hawk-moth

2009-10-02T22:10:00.003+02:00

Mum, come quick - there's a thing on your plants!

And what a thing. It was a Hummingbird Hawk-moth (Macroglossum stellatarum) - an insect which visits the balcony occasionally, but is by no means common. If I see one a year I'm lucky, and this was certainly the first I've spotted this year.

Excuse the not-exactly-perfect photos. They're not called Hummingbird Hawk-moths for nothing - they don't land on the plants but hover above them, keeping themselves alight by rapid wing flapping while they suck the nectar through their long proboscis (you can see it in the second and last photos). And they flit frequently from flower to flower. Which makes them difficult to photograph - especially when you've had to rush back into the house desperately trying to remember where you'd left your camera, and praying it would still be there when you got back. Which it was - but I had no time to worry about camera settings. I just clicked and hoped. However, if you follow some of the links you'll find some much clearer photos.

I knew they were described in a book I have (Collins Complete Guide to British Wildlife - a super book for basic identification of plants, birds, animals and insects found in the UK which I recommend highly), so later I went to look it up. They are apparently widespread across Mediterranean countries, central Asia and Japan, and get as far north as Scotland in the summer. In fact, following things up on the web later, I came across the UK Butterfly Conservation site, where you can record sightings. Mine's there now.

The adults love plumbago - that's where I almost always see them. But the book told me that the larvae feed on bedstraw.

My mind boggled. Was this beautiful insect in danger of dying out because of a lack of impoverished peasants stuffing their mattresses with straw? Were hypoallergenic fillings signalling the end of a species?

But no. Bedstraw is the common name of the genus Galium - which includes wildflowers such as Lady's Bedstraw and Hedge Bedstraw. I've not seen either growing much around Milan - which probably explains why we don't see the moths very often.

Moths. They look so different that it's hard to believe they really are moths - and one Italian site I found says that their visitors often mistake them for real hummingbirds. No sorry - not in Europe. I wish.

Ah well - that was my annual sighting, I thought. But then I came across this on the BBC Science and Nature site : Studies have noted that they have a remarkable memory, and return to the same flowerbeds at the same time everyday.

So maybe I should keep an eye open over the weekend.

Explore some more ...

Other nice sites which describe the hummingbird hawk-moth include :

Skywatch Friday : Alps

2009-10-01T20:34:00.002+02:00

Last week, I flew back to Milan from London. It was a beautifully clear day, with almost no cloud, providing wonderful views of Europe below. The white cliffs of Dover, the Seine winding through Paris, the Eiffel Tower and Versailles - they were all clearly visible.

Despite oohing and aahing for most of the trip though, it didn't occur to me that I had my camera in my bag until we reached the Alps. And thank goodness it finally did, because there the show really started. First there were the lower mountains, punctuated by long, twisting valleys with tiny houses clustered along the bottoms ...

But then we got into the high peaks. Where were we exactly? I'm not sure. Could that have been the Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn in the pictures below? I wish airlines would tell you where you were more often. German Wings used to have wonderful little screens dotted around the cabin which showed you your route, and exactly where the plane had got to, but even they seem to have discontinued it.

Wherever we were, it was a flight I won't forget.

For more great photos of the sky and from the sky, check out the Skywatch Friday site. Of the photos already posted this week, some of my favourites were on Stony River in Ireland. Enjoy.

Oh my goodness ...

2009-09-30T17:55:00.004+02:00

I am, as a close friend of mine would say, gobstruck. Now I know what they feel like on Oscar night. You know, they're sat there at their tables trying to look as if they're really enjoying themselves while someone a lot more famous jokes around and fumbles with the envelope. Smiles are fixed on with Bostik and they're all ready to applaud and make gracious comments when they lose. And then come the words And the winner is ... and suddenly they're up on the stage looking dazed and stuttering out something about being sure they'd lose and not having even thought about an acceptance speech.

No, I've never believed it either, but in this case it's true. When The Balcony Garden was nominated for Best Container Gardening Blog in the Blotanical awards, I looked at the competition and thought Well, you can forget about that then .... I knew three of the other blogs nominated well - Soliloquy, Flowergardengirl, and Plants are the Strangest People - and when I toddled over to have a look at the fourth - Garden Geek - the depression just deepened.

I was sure I knew the order we'd all come in. I'd even got this post mentally written out, congratulating the winner, talking about how chuffed I was even to get into the final five and thanking the people who did vote for me.

But that's where I don't have to change anything in the planned post. Because I was over the moon to think that enough people liked the BG enough to get me into the final five, and I do want to say a huge thank you to all of you who voted the blog into first place - OK, OK and even to those who just thought about voting for me, Mania.

Because, for all the categories, voting was enormously difficult. Time after time there were at least two blogs nominated which I thought were equally good. How do you choose ? I tied myself in knots trying to be fair, looking carefully at all the blogs in the categories I was voting for and mentally awarding points for all sorts of things to see who came out top. And I'm still not sure that I got it right.

As for the winners - well, all of them are obviously excellent blogs and well deserving. And in general, a blog which I thought missed out in one category won in another. But there are a few results which, personally, I found surprising - blogs which I thought would walk away with an award but "only" came third or fourth. "Only". It's a word which doesn't make sense given just how strong the competition was in many of the categories. And as I said, it was certainly true in mine. So if you've never come across any of the other four blogs which were nominated, do yourself a favour and go visit them. But only, of course, if you promise not to vote for them next year :)

Wow! I've been nominated ..

2009-09-25T17:06:00.005+02:00

OK, well - I was going to ignore it. I mean play it cool and not make a big deal of it. But then I go into other sites and see they're all yelling VOTE FOR ME! Well, if the competition is going to be brash about it, then perhaps I should say something ...

I've been nominated for the 2009 Blotanical Awards, for the Best Container Gardening Blog. I don't know who nominated me but thank you, thank you, thank you. I honestly didn't expect it, and just making it into the top five makes me feel great, regardless of the final result. A big hug to all of you ...

But for those of you who haven't been here much before, and who aren't sure why I've been nominated - here are a couple of links to some of the posts that I've enjoyed writing the most. Decide for yourselves, and may the best container gardening blog win!

Growing Cotton on the Balcony

Tulips - The Second Year

Balcony Gardening - Or Just Exterior Decorating?

Form and Colour, Colour and Form

or, try this collection of posts with the label Working on the Balcony

Best Container Gardening Blog is only one category though and there are a lot of others to vote for. In fact, I admit to being a bit bemused. There are 75 all together (mainly because each US state has its own) and in some categories I'd happily vote for any of the finalists. How do you choose ?

Voting is open for another couple of days (and not 285 as Stuart's delightfully idiosyncratic counter is telling us), so if you're a Blotanical member but have not yet cast your vote, do nip over to the site and have a look.

Skywatch Friday : Buzzard

2009-09-24T20:00:00.003+02:00

While we were at Eraclea Mare, we went on a lot of long bike rides - through the fields, around the lagoon, and along the river path. On one of them I spotted a buzzard (buteo buteo) circling far overhead. It was a perfect day : bright blue skies with patches of fluffy cloud, and as he circled he passed from one to the other.

Buzzards are now common throughout Europe and also in various areas of Asia - there are estimated to be over 4m of them. Yet I don't think I'd ever seen a buzzard until a few years ago, when I started to notice them in North Germany. We go there each year for Christmas, and in the winter, when the trees are bare, they can often be seen as you drive down the motorways, perched on tree branches. But seen like that they're small, fleeting silhouettes. You can recognise them by their shape - the plump body and stubby tail (it is when they're perched) are giveaways - but there's no great satisfaction involved.

This time it was different. Despite the height at which the bird was flying, with the aid of my camera zoom it felt almost touchable. Definitely one of the highlights of the holiday.

Check out the other Skywatch Friday posts here. I had to wait a while this evening to find one worth recommending - but I did enjoy this one from Finland.

Hints of Autumn

2009-09-21T22:49:00.003+02:00

Summer doesn't want to die this year. I came over to England with a case full of warm clothes, but I've not needed them. It's been warm and sunny. Not too hot - but warm enough to be out in a t-shirt. Perfect gardening weather

But we've reached the autumn equinox and from now on we're heading for winter, whatever the current temperatures are telling us. This is the time of the "transumanza" - when, in Italy, the flocks of sheep and cattle would traditionally be brought back from their summer pastures in the mountains to lower and milder climes. We may be lucky and ease in gently - tradition has it that the weather between the 21st and 23rd of September sets the pattern for the rest of the autumn - but it's time to get ready.

Even while we were at the sea earlier in the month, the clues were there. It still seemed like summer weather, but even when we arrived, the Virginia Creeper was telling a different story. And by the time we left, just over a week later, there was no way of pretending not to notice.

The squirrels in my garden know. They don't play any longer - all day they're back and forth, burying nuts. The warm weather hasn't fooled them. Hard times are coming.

The plants know too. Their blooms have given way to seed pods and berries.

And the trees know. It's already time to get the rake out.

Winter's on the way.

Bright Spots in the Garden

2009-09-20T21:24:00.002+02:00

I've been back in England for a week, thinking that we might finally get the finishing touches put to the house and get it ready for letting again. But it seems that every time we do one thing, another ten problems arise - and rather than finish off decorating the bathroom this week, we've had to strip it down to the bricks and start again. So I'm going to be coming back and forth for most of the autumn ..

But if the house is still a disaster, the good weather this week has given me time to get on with the garden, and it is very gradually coming into shape. But despite the jungle that I found in July, it wasn't all doom and gloom, even at the start. There were a number of plants which hadn't completely succumbed to neglect and were bravely flowering on, against the odds. Like the roses which, despite being covered in black spot, continued to put out the odd flower.

Then there was the hebe bush. It was already past its best when I got back in mid-July, but you could still see how glorious it had been. The bush self-seeded several years ago, in another part of the garden where I didn't want it. I transferred it when it was a tiny little twig, not sure if it would take. It's now five foot high and four foot wide, and was covered in blooms, much to the delight of the local butterflies.

Another bush of about the same size was the fuchsia by the front gate. It's been there for as long as I remember - at least thirty years, possibly longer. It's not my favourite fuchsia variety, but what it lacks in the quality of the blooms, it certainly makes up for in quantity.

A number of plants had self-seeded in awkward places, but were doing the best they could. These sweet peas had grabbed hold of the conifer to support them ...

while the cracks in the paths had provided a home for the alyssum.

Add to that the hydrangeas which I've already posted about, and there was at least a bit of relief from the weeds. More colour was provided by the berries, which are now glorious - but I'm going to save that for another post.

Skywatch Friday : Sea and Sky

2009-09-17T19:50:00.001+02:00

If you want to go surfing, the Adriatic coast is not the place to be. The wide flat sands mean the water is extremely shallow - in some places you can walk out for a good distance from the shore and still only be up to your knees. Put this together with the relatively enclosed geography of the sea, and if the weather is good you normally get millpond conditions.

The nine days we spent there were nearly all hot and sunny. But there was one day when the wind got up.

The area is famous for a wind known as the Bora, which blows about 40 days a year and affects both the North Italian and Croatian coasts. It's caused by an area of high pressure from the polar regions meeting warmer air from the Adriatic. It frequently gets up to over 120km an hour, and though nothing like that when we were there, was strong enough to force me off my bike.

The winds whipped up a few waves, and I was able to get these photos of the sea and the sky for Skywatch Friday. Enjoy.

If you want to see some other great photos contributed to Skywatch this week, check out this pic of the sky over a lake and mountains in Austria or this sunset over Annapurna. They make mine look feeble.

Dead Man's Lagoon

2009-09-17T10:53:00.004+02:00

Have you ever fallen in love with a place at first sight? It happened to me last week. After we'd gone back to Italy, my son and I went back to Eraclea Mare for a week at the sea. We'd been there last year and loved it (see here), but what we didn't realise was that we'd missed the best bit.

Eraclea Mare is situated not far from Venice, along the north west Adriatic coast. You probably know that Venice itself is built on a lagoon, but in fact lagoon areas extend much further up the coast. There is one, for instance at Caorle, where we used to spend our holidays until we discoved Eraclea, made famous by Hemingway who used to go duck shooting there.

Eraclea's lagoon is different. It's smaller - only two square kilometers, is (thankfully) a nature reserve, and until 1935 didn't exist at all.

La Laguna del Mort (Dead Man's Lagoon) was formed when the River Piave, which used to run parallel to the sea for a couple of kilometers, overflowed its right bank, flooded the strip of land between the river and the sea, and changed course overnight, reaching the sea a couple of kilometers further up. The land between the old mouth of the river (pic above) and the new (below) became a lagoon.

Why didn't we explore it last year? Firstly because we had the rest of the area to get to know, and secondly because I was aching too much after a morning on horseback to contemplate the bike riding or walking necessary to get there. This year all the work in the garden in London must have made me fitter - I managed to do both.

From the village you can either cycle through the fields to the far end of the lagoon, or walk along the paths which lead through the sand dunes and pinewoods which border the wetland area. We did both, several times, and in later posts I'll blog about the plants and the wildlife we saw there. But for now, just enjoy the landscape.

Why the name? Not sure. If the net is to be believed there was once a corpse in the lagoon which every so often would rise to the surface to frighten passersby. Hmm - none of the local people seemed to have heard of that one. They appeared to think the "death" referred to the death of the river (though I've translated the name as Dead Man's Lagoon, a more literal translation would be The Lagoon of the Dead One, so it's not impossible). That seems strange though, as the river didn't actually disappear. I'm keeping an open mind.

We were there at the end of the season, and on a cloudy day. We had the place almost to ourselves. The beach however is well-known for being a naturist beach and (again if the net is to be believed) a rather steamy one at that. Oh well, the beach is separated from the lagoon itself by sand dunes and I guess it's big enough for both naturists and naturalists. I for one shall be going back.

Skywatch Friday : Another London Sunset

2009-09-03T19:34:00.000+02:00

Just one photo today, but I loved the layered effect of these clouds over South London at the end of August. The photo was taken at about 8.40 pm.

Oh, my poor balcony ...

2009-09-02T16:05:00.001+02:00

Never, ever go away and leave your balcony to the mercy of husbands and plant sitters. Oh my poor pelargoniums, eaten alive by Geranium Bronze Butterfly larvae.

And oh my poor Hebe. Were you scorched to death or did they just forget to water you?

The red spider mite has taken its toll too. Oh my poor Jerusalem artichokes.

And my poor Philadelphus - well, it seems to have turned to paper.

I could go on. The grey-brown mould covered hump which was once a pot of thyme, the dry yellow stalks which I was hoping would produce a mouth-watering crop of tomatoes. I could publish the photos, but I think it would be too upsetting. And children might come in.

With only a few exceptions there's going to be nothing to do but rip everything out and start again. And even the exceptions may not survive as I'm going to be away again for the next few weeks - firstly at the sea for a few days with my son, and then back in England, where we didn't manage to finish doing everything that was necessary to the house, despite working frantically for five weeks. So the balcony is going to be dependent on my husband again - who swears the plants were still "mostly" alive when he came over to London and left them to our plant sitter in mid-August. We shall see ...

Blast from the Past Tuesday : Tree in a Cage

2009-08-25T19:46:00.000+02:00

This post, in the Blast from the Past series, comes from May 2008. It was the third of a series of posts about a visit to Gardaland, a large theme park in the north of Italy.

In the middle of Gardaland, there's a nine foot tree in a cage. One of the rides perhaps? Something like the Ents from Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter's Whomping Willow? Both good candidates for a theme park attraction I would have thought. But no, it's a real tree and it's not violent - it's a Wollemi Pine.

The Wollemi Pine is, in the wild, one of the rarest trees in the world. Only about a hundred trees remain (some sources say less), in a secret location in the Wollemi National Park, in Queensland Australia. Why so secret? For the same reason that this one was in a cage - to protect them from people. Who might inadvertently introduce disease, start fires and of course, rip off branches. Well, of course, if it's rare you've got to have a souvenir, haven't you?

It's also one of the oldest living plants. Fossil records date back 200 million years, and at the time the earth was covered by dense rain forest, it was found all over the world. But it was thought to have become extinct together with the dinosaurs.

When I saw the tree, my first thought was that it looked like a bright green Monkey Puzzle tree - it has the same long needles. And in fact, it's from the same family Araucariaceae (wow, I spelt that right first time.)

Discovered by chance in 1994 by one of the Wollemi Park rangers, David Noble (it has been given the official name of Wollemia nobilis), the tree is now the focus of a conservation attempt. While the original trees are being protected, they're now quite widely propagated and you can see them in various botanical gardens around the world. In Kew Gardens in London, for instance. And even in theme parks.

You can also get one for the garden if you want. You'll need a bit of space, as they grow to over a hundred feet, but one site also pushes them as good container plants, claiming that they "can be maintained in a pot almost indefinitely". Perhaps I'll get one for the balcony. Though as they were only discovered in 1994 and have only been commercially available for a couple of years, I'd like to know how they know.

In the wild they grow in acid soil, and in humid rainforest conditions. However, they are apparently hardy, surviving at a range of -5° to 45°C (that's 23°-113°F). If you're in USDA zones 7-11, you should be fine.

There's plenty on the web about them if you want to know more. Just Google Wollemi Pine. One of the most interesting sites has the tapescript of an Australian Broadcasting Corporation documentary on the trees, called A Green Dinosaur. It's well worth a look. Or click here for a list of botanical gardens where they can be seen, and for distributors in various countries. The site for North America is here.

It's a shame to let old posts go to waste. If you'd like to join in with Blast from the Past Tuesday (or Sunday or Monday, whenever you like), just "revive" one of your favourite old posts from at least a year ago and leave a comment below with a link to your blog so that people can find it.

Synchronised leaf stripping

2009-08-20T08:04:00.001+02:00

I found these caterpillars in the garden yesterday - they're quite clearly in training for the next Olympics, which are being held a couple of miles from here. The synchronised leaf stripping event. Not bad - though the ones on the bottom need to get their tails up a bit more if they're to be in with a chance. I could wish they'd waited a bit longer to move into the area though - my garden is not the Olympic Village and they're polishing off what little is left of my poor roses. Oh well, sport has to be encouraged amongst the young, I suppose ...

UFOs in the Garden

2009-08-19T09:30:00.010+02:00

No, we haven't been invaded by aliens. UFOs - unidentified flowering objects. Scattered around the garden are a number of plants that I can't identify, one of which has been bugging me for years.

It's a pretty little flower which has grown on our rockery for at least thirty years. It's a hardy perennial which creeps along at ground level, is drought tolerant, grows happily in minimum soil in the cracks between the rocks, and in June/July puts out loads of daisy-like flowers from the rosettes of leaves. It also seeds easily - a couple of years ago I took some of the seeds home to grow on the balcony. I posted about it then in fact, but with only the seedling to go by, no-one managed to identify it. It did fine until the heat struck and then couldn't take it.

But what is it? I've not been able to find it anywhere on the net or in gardening books. Any ideas? I'd love to resolve the mystery.

The garden is full of bulbs. Every time I turn over a forkful of soil it brings up loads of them. Many are just bulblets which are not yet ready for flowering, but I'm saving them all and dividing them into types. Most will go straight back into the garden when I've finished weeding the beds, but some will come back to Milan with me so that I can find out what they are.

One type is already sprouting. A lot of them were in the middle of the lawn. I have no idea how they got there or what they are, but I've dug them up and replanted them all together in the bed which I yanked all the borage out of the other day, in front of the daffodil bulbs. I hope they'll go well together.

Another mystery plant growing in the lawn is undoubtedly a weed, but one I've not come across before. I dug it up thinking I'd find more bulbs, but no - there's an ominous looking taproot. For the moment I'm going to have to ignore it. When the lawn is mowed it hardly notices, as it just looks like a thick leaved grass, but it grows at a rate of knots in comparison to the grass and soon becomes evident if you don't go round it with the lawnmower frequently. It's probably something I should be dealing with, but I'm afraid I don't have time ...

And then there's this little plant which is almost as invasive as the borage which I talked about a couple of posts ago. It's everywhere, including in the lawn, despite the fact that I thought I'd got rid of it last time I was here. I don't actually mind it in the flower beds. Until I've got anything else to put there, it at least provides ground cover, and it's better than grass or borage. But what is it? It has pretty, heart shaped leaves, a thickish root and produces purplish seed pods. I took a few of them back to Milan two years ago, but couldn't get them to germinate. Ironic, as they clearly self seed like crazy here. I've never seen it in flower - if there are flowers of any note they must bloom at a time of year when I'm never here.

So - if you have any ideas about any of them, please let me know so I can take them off the UFO list. I'm sure that really they all have a rational explanation...

Blast from the past Tuesday : The Only Garden Tool You'll Ever Need ...

2009-08-18T18:37:00.000+02:00

This week's Blast from the Past is from April 2008 and is in memory of our little Hamster Helper Benji, who sadly died before the year was out.

What's your favourite garden tool? Carol has her hoes and Hannah was recently waxing lyrical about a new lawnmower, but neither of those would be much use on a balcony. The garden tool I wouldn't be without is my Hamster Helper.

Whatever the job, your Hamster Helper will be up to it. Want to thin out some seedlings? Switch Hamster Helper to the "eat" function.

Need to pot up some new plants? Throw away that trowel! With Hamster Helper on "dig", the containers are ready in no time.

And if you have shrubs to prune, you'll never again have the problem of those secateurs letting you down at the last moment. Just place your Hamster Helper on "gnaw" and watch the twigs fall.

Small enough to slip into your pocket as you work in the garden, Hamster Helper is cheap, clean and easy to run. Powered largely by sunflower seeds, she'll run for hours with no effect at all on your electricity bills.

Hamster helper comes in two versions. Shown here is the smaller dwarf variety, which comes in a variety of colours and is ideal on the balcony. For the extra power needed for garden use, you may prefer the larger, golden variety.

Don't delay - check out Hamster Helper at your local pet shop today!

PS. Thanks to Benji for posing for the photos, and for not biting me once while we faffed about with the camera. David Attenborough, eat your heart out...

Don't let your old posts get lost! If you'd like to join in with Blast from the Past Tuesday (or Thursday or Friday, whenever you like), just "revive" one of your favourite old posts from at least a year ago and leave a comment below with a link to your blog so that people can find it.

Yergh - Borage

2009-08-18T08:20:00.002+02:00

Never, never plant borage in your garden unless you can keep it in a container and be there to cut off all the flowers before they go to seed. Yes, I know I said that two years ago. But it's still there. Despite digging - I thought - every single root out of the garden when I was last here, it's back as if nothing had ever happened. It's in the flowerbeds, it's in the lawn, it's in the cracks in the paths ... Borage must be the most invasive plant in existence.

Needless to say, I didn't know that when I planted it about fiften years ago. It seemed such a pretty plant, with its broad green leaves and stems of blue, starry flowers. but since then it's been a constant battle which I know I'm not going to win until I can actually stay here for a year and deal with each plant one by one, and each seedling as it germinates, taking action at the first sign of sprouting leaves.

The problem is that digging doesn't help unless you can be sure of getting every single bit of the root. And it's almost impossible. Borage has huge taproots which will grow back if you leave even a bit in the soil. So I've tried another strategy this year. Despite the fact that I generally avoid chemicals, I sprayed with a systemic weedkiller to try and kill the plant before starting to dig.

That has meant a nail biting wait - and all the heavy work in the last weeks of the holiday(should that be "holiday"??). The weedkiller had a fairly evident effect on the leaves almost immediately - but I had to wait to give it time to work on the roots. And in the meantime I started to see the plants I'd missed - healthy green new leaves sprouting amidst the curled brown ones. So I had to go round those with more spray - and wait again. And then do a third round for the ones I'd missed both times.

I think I've now got it all, and I'm starting the digging. I tackled a small bed in the back garden first - I thought if I could get a few of my daffodil bulbs in, it might spur me on a bit to a job I'm really not looking forward to. It's heavy work and I'm going to bed each night with pains in muscles I didn't know I had. There were relatively few plants in the small bed - but some of the roots were monsters, and they still filled an entire bucket.

Did I get them all? I doubt it, but I'm just hoping that the weedkiller had had time to get down to the bits I missed. The bulbs went in and I'm now fighting the squirrel who keeps digging them up again. He doesn't seem to want to eat them, and in a comment on another post Daffodil Planter said they were poisonous. So I suspect he's just taking advantage of the soft earth to bury his acorns and hoicking my bulbs out of the way in the process. Anyone know any good squirrel repellent?

Back to the plot. The disadvantage of waiting so long is that I'm not going to be here when the seeds germinate in the nice earth I've prepared for them. Last time, by digging early I manage to hoe the new seedlings before I left. This year, though I may have dealt with the roots more effectively, I may even have created a worse problem. Ah well - come back in two years time. There will undoubtedly be a post in August 2011 which starts Never, never plant borage in your garden ....

Hydrangea Dilemma

2009-08-17T08:50:00.002+02:00

Wow, can we grow hydrangeas. They are one of the few things which continue to thrive in the garden despite the neglect. They're all pink mopheads, and I've noticed that these have been getting a bad press around gardening blogs recently. But I love them.

Yes it's true that they can start to look tatty when the colours start to fade, and the pink becomes a dirty cream colour, like the ones below. And if, like mine, the dead growth hasn't been cut away for two years, they look even tattier, with dry brown heads everywhere. But I love them just for those weeks when they are an enormous mass of pink flowers ...

They're also nice used as cut flowers for the house - they'll last for a week or so in water ...

We have three in the garden, two at the back and one at the front. They must have been there for at least thirty years by now. When Dad was alive he would turn them blue - not difficult here as we have a naturally acidic soil - but they've long reverted.

Over the past week I've been tidying them up a bit. I've got rid of the blackberry bramble that was growing all over the one below, and cut away the dead heads and stems. With the result that they now look a bit battered. But they'll bounce back.

I've also taken cuttings. I put them into a propagator the first day I was here, and they've now rooted. One at least will go home with me to the balcony, but I'm not sure what to do with the others. The idea was to plant them in the beds which are currently being taken over by grass and borage, hoping that they'll survive the winter (please, please let it be mild) despite the fact that they'll not have had long to establish themselves. Perhaps if I mulch well ...

In particular I thought of establishing a hydrangea hedge in the bed that separates my garden from my neighbours, plus a couple out back. The dilemma is : what's better, a bare garden full of weeds or one that seems overrun by hydrangeas?

Planting a lot of other stuff is out of the question. The house is in such a state that it's draining the budget, and anyway there's just no point spending money on a garden which, quite likely, no-one is going to look at again till I come back. I have picked up a couple of special offers at our local DIY centre - 200 mixed daffodil bulbs for £10 and four bush roses for the same price. OK, it's not the ideal time for planting either - though I'm just within the limits for the daffs - but it's the only time I have.

So I suspect one of these days in the years to come you'll be reading a post which reads something like damn-hydrangeas-why-ever-did-I-plant so-many. Oh well...

Blast from the Past Tuesday : Five Things I Hate about Container Gardening Books

2009-08-11T17:12:00.009+02:00

This week's Blast from the Past post comes from February 2008.

I have two types of gardening books on my bookshelves : the first are about gardening, the second are about container gardening.

The container gardening books have a different emphasis from the others. They're not so much about how to grow things, as what plants to combine to produce the most attractive containers. And at times they drive me mad. Here's why ...

1. The assumption that container gardening means patio gardening, or at least that you have a large terrace. If you can use enormous containers, raised beds and so on, its a whole different ball game from balcony gardening, and much of what you need to know is no different from gardening with a garden. The book often looks great, but relegates small container gardening to hardly more than a chapter. Container gardening should cover both possibilities - so give us balcony gardeners at least 50% of the space please.

2. The perfect pictures. Five different types of plant in the same container, all in flower and at their best, and all exactly complementary heights and lengths at exactly the same time. Yeah, yeah. Buy them from the garden centre, give them a week to settle and they'll be like that - for another week. But then one will shoot up, another will get attacked by pests, and a third will stop flowering. And the container will spend the rest of the summer looking tatty.

3. The one-sided pictures. The most difficult thing about balcony gardening is that all the light comes from one direction. So the plants lean towards it, away from the house, and the container ends up lop-sided with the plants trailing over the balcony railings away from you. All you get to see from your living room are the backs of flowers and leaves leaning away. And tall plants end up looking like the leaning tower of Pisa. Smaller containers can be turned regularly, but that doesn't help with the large fixed ones. Look at the one in the photo for example - super. But what's it like from the other side?

4. The perfect colour schemes, achieved only by going out to buy an exact variety of a plant. Phyllitis scolopendrium "Cristatum" - whaaat ? Here I'd be lucky if I could get the plant, let alone a specific variety. I have sometimes thought of going to our local garden centre with a list and saying "I'm looking for these." I suspect the reply would be the Italian equivalent of "What about some nice pelargoniums, luv?"

OK, OK - I'm just envious because my containers never look as good as the ones in the books. But that doesn't stop me yanking them out every spring, poring over the pictures and trying again. And buying more. Maybe this year ...

Don't let your old posts get lost! If you'd like to join in with Blast from the Past Tuesday (or Saturday or Sunday, whenever you like), just "revive" one of your favourite old posts from at least a year ago, with a brief explanation of when it's from and that you're "reviving" it for BFTP Tuesday, and leave a comment below with a link to your blog so that people can find it.