Review of the Year 2009

Has a year really passed since I was sitting here doing the review of 2008? It seems about five minutes ago. But in three days it´s going to be 2010, so here´s a look back at what has happened this year...

On January 1st we were in Germany and it was snowing. But that didn´t stop me getting myself to the local garden centre and stocking up on seeds for the year. Sadly it wasn´t to be a particularly good year on the balcony - too much work and having to be away a lot meant that I had much less time to spend on gardening, and the casualty rate was high. So if you don´t remember having seen photos of many of the plants in the seed packets, well that´s why.

Back in Milan and the bad weather continued, meaning that most of my gardening happened indoors. At the end of the month I posted on looking after Scindapsus - a plant which people often scorn, but which personally I love having around.

By February the weather was getting better, and it was time to start preparing for the year. A balcony may not be quite so time-consuming as a garden, but there´s still plenty to do clearing up after the winter and preparing for spring. See here for a checklist. February was also the month when I posted about how my cooking tended to revolve around the herb savory - and how I was planning to grow it on the balcony in 2009. Sadly it was one of the failures, but I´ll be trying again this year.

March arrived, and suddenly things were blooming again. Much to my surprise, the tulip bulbs which I´d planted for the second year running were the greatest success of the season. So much for all the books which said that tulip bulbs planted in containers should be thrown away after flowering. They´ve gone in again this year - we shall see.

In April, I was also planting salad and veg. But we´ll draw a veil over that one. If my flower gardening wasn´t greatly successful this year, the kitchen garden was a disaster. It produced exactly two French beans ... But then, when your packet of lettuce seeds assures you you´ll be harvesting tomatoes, I suppose failure is to be expected. Confused? So was I - click here.



May. If the balcony isn´t looking good in May, then it never will be. My pride and joy this year was my little campanula, which bloomed its heart out for me all month.

June was pretty good too, with nasturtiums, petunias and surfinia, pelargoniums, hollyhocks and begonias all in full bloom. And for the first time ever, I managed to persuade the great tits and blue tits which live in the garden surrounding the flat to come on to the balcony to feed.

In July we were off to England - where I found my garden completely overgrown. The photo below shows what used to be the rose bed. Two months hard work followed, to get it back to some semblance of order. I planted a lot of bulbs and other stuff while I was there - and hope to get back soon to see how they are doing.

However, the overgrown state of the garden meant that it had become a haven for wildlife - including a family of foxes, who soon realised that dinner was on offer nightly. Not too much - we wouldn´t be there to provide for them forever and the young ones had to learn to forage for themselves. But enough to encourage them to come and check us out every evening.

In September my son and I went to the sea for ten days - to Eraclea Mare, not far from Venice. It was undoubtedly the best two weeks of the year.



On one of our many walks and bike rides into the lagoon, I spotted a buzzard circling high above us.

September also brought the honour of being voted "Best Container Gardening Blog" on Blotanical - something I truly didn´t expect as the competition was so strong.

In October I found a mystery plant had self seeded itself in one of the containers. But several people who read the post were able to identify it as Kalanchoe daigremontiana - or Mother of Thousands. Sadly it succumbed to the sudden drop in temperature we had in December. It was looking very sorry for itself when I left for Christmas holidays, and I very much doubt if it will have made it.

But on a cheerier note, October was also the month when the Hummingbird Hawkmoth visited the balcony.


In November the chrysanthemums were in bloom ....

... and it was also the month when Bilbo the garden gnome visited the Balcony Garden. for those of you who don´t know him, he´s doing a world tour, and visiting people´s blogs along the way. When he left me, he went off to Sweden to visit Gittan and play in the snow..

In December the weather turned chilly and it was time to cover up the balcony before the first sprinkling of snow fell. Everything was covered with fleece and moved back against the warmth of the walls of the flat. But temperatures were about to fall to a record -14C (that´s 7F). That happened the day we left for Germany again, so I´ve not yet seen what damage it´s done. Will anything have survived?

So, the year has come full circle, and in a couple of days will start again. It was a busy, and at times hectic year, but without real ups and downs. I had little time for the balcony (and some months even less for blogging) and it showed in the results. So my goal for next year is to find the time again, and to have the balcony looking as good as it has in some past years. And of course, to get a few more than two French beans ....

To everyone who´s followed the Balcony Garden over the past year, I hope you have a very, very

Happy New Year!

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Another Year Over ....

OK, so I´ve missed another deadline. 2008 was supposed to end with a review of the year posted on December 31st. And here we are, twelve hours into 2009 and I´m only just getting around to it. And one of my New Year resolutions is to try and manage my time better ...

The year started as it finished, with us here in Germany. While we were here last year, I noticed two large crassula ovata in flower, and the post I wrote on them turned out to be my most popular post ever - goodness knows why. But the search engines seem to like it and it still tops my list of most visited pages. This year they´re still there, but there´s no sign of flowers. Could it be a plant which only flowers occasionally, I wonder. Back home my own still shows no sign of blooms at all.

My own favourite January post though was the one I wrote On the naming of plants ... - something that sems to get less logical the more they try and clean it up.

In February my primula were in full flower and I was itching to get on with seed sowing. While I waited though, I asked What Kind of a Garden Blogger are you? - bifurcated, a butterfly, a scribbler or ...??

March was a good month both for gardening and blogging. The tulips were out, and the primula continued to surprise - as I wrote in The Curious Incident of the Primrose that Wanted to be a Polyanthus. I also posted, a bit late, on Where in the world is the Balcony Garden? for Jodi at Bloomingwriter´s Garden Blogger´s Geography Project describing living and gardening in Milan.

In April I wrote about my little Hamster Helper : The Only Garden Tool You´ll Ever Need. Benji sadly died later in the year - she was by that time an old lady, but refused to accept that she could no longer climb and jump around as she used to. And fell and broke her back. We miss her.

Milan was featured again in April in the GBD post where I talked about how every balcony in the city seems to turn yellow when the sedum blooms. Even people who have no other plants on their balconies seem to have sedum - and I can´t claim to be an exception. I also talked about how many plants which are usually sold as annuals in fact are far hardier than they seem, and do well as perennials - something I´ve picked up on again recently.

In May the balcony was at its best. It was also the month when I had a weekend in Barcelona, where I admired the way Gaudi´s architecture blended so well with the naturalfeatures of the Park Guell. It was also the month I wrote about the Wollemi Pine, one of the Earth´s oldest living plants. It´s been around for 200 million years, but the living version was only recently discovered in Australia.

June saw me spending quite a lot of time in a local park, where I not only saw the lavender in bloom but also came across some dinosaur eggs. But perhaps the most interesting post was An Interview with Stuart of Blotanical, where he talked about setting up the site and his plans for the future.



July saw the end of the great Bill and Ben experiment, with the sad demise of Bill. And we were looking at Milan again with the post Guerilla Gardening in Milan.

In August we were on holiday at the sea. But apart from a few posts from there, I also wrote about Ten Reasons Why I Wouldn´t Be Without My Scissors And for the umpteenth time I wrote about the plants I´d lost to red spider mite. They hit late this year due to the cold, rainy spring, but made up for it with a vengeance when they did finally arrive.

September saw another interview - this time with Carol of May Dreams Gardens.

And I also inadvertently stirred up a hornet´s nest with the post Balcony Gardening - or Just Exterior Decorating. It gave me a chance though to write a follow up post which I´d been thinking about for a while : Form and Colour, Colour and Form


October had the Virginia Creeper on the canal showing off its glorious colours ...



But apart from that the autumn was a bit miserable, leaving me overworked, burnt out and in November with a bad back that had me writing about how not to shift containers around on the balcony.

I perked up a bit in December though, with the closest I think I´ll ever get to a rant about the way the EU has watered down its plans to combat CO2 emissions and therefore climate change. And of course there was the usual Christmas Quiz to finish the year.



And there goes 2008. What will 2009 bring? Who knows. But I do have plans. I never make New Year resolutions, but this year I have set some goals - some of them to do with the blog. So watch this space. I´ll be back soon.

But till then, to all of you ..

May 2009 see your seeds germinate, the flowers bloom copiously and your vegetable garden make you self sufficient. May the butterflies come to sip the nectar but lay their eggs elsewhere, and may the red spider mite just go away. A long, long way away.




Happy New Year !

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Review of the Year

As it´s the end of the year, I thought a look back at what 2007 brought might be timely. So here goes ...

January : We started the year in Germany, with an ice storm, but apart from that it was a fairly quiet month, the highlight being reading what was probably the best book I came across in 2007 - Curious Incidents in the Garden at Nighttime.

February : February brought us the coldest weather of an exceptionally mild winter. For the first time the temperature dropped below zero, and it was time to cover up all the plants - something I usually need to do in early December.

March : The cold weather didn´t last long though, and in March spring was back. The plum tree outside the balcony was in full bloom, and I saw both the first butterfly and the first caterpillar - little did I know at the time what a plague they would be this year, and that I´d be finding them right up to December.

April : April started with a visit to the annual Easter Monday flower market in Milan. By now, all my spring flowers were in full bloom, and on the 15th I joined in for the first time to Gardener´s Bloom Day.

May : Only three posts in May - we had visitors and it was a busy time. I continued with my monthly posts on the calendar I´d been given for Christmas, which focused each month on a different plant and its medicinal uses. This month´s plant was calendula - recommended for the treatment of skin complaints.

June : By June the caterpillar plague was really under way and I was losing plants right left and centre. As I don´t like killing anything, I was picking them off several times a day and trying to persuade them to stay in my caterpillarium - but they still kept coming.

July : July started with a weekend in Liguria, where the climate - and thus the vegetation - is quite different from here. I also started posting regularly again after being ill for a while. Unfortunately it wasn´t only the blog that had been neglected but also the balcony, with predictable results. I also posted about this year´s failures - so numerous it ended up as a two-part post. I suspect late planting was the reason for the pitiful growth and lack of flowers on plants like my hollyhocks but it didn´t explain the lack of flowers on the mandevilla, which grew happily all year but failed to produce a single bloom.

August : In August I was back at my house in london - and spent nearly the whole of the month clearing the garden and fighting against the borage which had completely taken over. By the time I left it was looking tidy, if a bit bare. I planted as much as I could at that time of year - who knows if it´s come up?

September : Most of my September posts were still about the garden, as I had no internet access while I was away. Although I think I manage to grow quite a lot on the balcony, a garden certainly provides more to write about. As well as the plants, there are also the birds and other wildlife that visit. Back on the balcony, the only wildlife I was meeting were the caterpillars, which were again wreaking havoc and destruction.

October : October brought the first autumn flowers, though as it was still warm the summer flowers kept goin too. I also posted for the first time on my Crassula Ovalis - whose name at the time I didn´t know - and which I shall post about again in the next week or so.

November : November started with th the four days of the Garden Blogger´s Carnival - which linked to posts from other blogs. Day One focused on the theme of wildlife in the garden, Day Two on vegetable gardening, Day Three on winter gardening, while Day Four was - well a bit of a hotchpotch. Thanks again to everyone who took part. There´ll be news of a new carnival posted in early January - this time with a difference.

December : And that brings us almost up to date. December saw a visit to the annual Craft Fair in Milan to buy bulbs, where amonst the daffodils and tulips I also found the "Monster from the Deep", Eremurus. Then thoughts turned to Christmas with the Christmas Quiz, and a few days ago, as well as celebrating Christmas itself, we celebrated the 100th post on the Balcony Garden.

And that´s the review of the year. If you´d like to do one of your own, just leave a comment once you´ve posted, so that we know where to find you. And in the meantime ...

Have a Very Happy New Year!

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