Guerrilla Gardening in Milan

My favourite example of guerrilla gardening in Milan is along the tram lines just outside the centre of town. In Milan the trams mostly run along the roads -or rather don't, because the Milanese habit of double parking on bends usually means that at a certain point the trams find they can't pass. And if one tram gets stuck, the one behind does too. And the one behind that, and .... So you not infrequently find a little row of ten or so trams patiently waiting for the tow-away truck to turn up and remove the car whose bright spark of an owner decided to park it too close to the tram lines.

However, in the few instances where the roads are wide enough, the trams have their own lane down the middle of the road, with the tracks going in each direction usually divided by some scrubby, weedy grass and the odd tree.

And a few years ago, in one of these areas, some hollyhocks suddenly sprang up. There's no way they could have got there by chance - someone must have planted them intentionally. And every year since, they've multiplied, so that they now spread about 50 yards along the tram lines. Have they just self-seeded or does that same guerrilla gardener go back each year to collect the seeds and plant them again a bit further along? I suspect so, and if s/he goes on, in a few years they'll be stupendous. At that point the tramlines run for about a kilometer before they hit the road again, and a line of hollyhocks extending all the way along would be glorious.

My own hollyhocks on the balcony have done quite well this year, but the colours have been disappointing. They were supposed to be mixed, but the majority came up white, with just a couple of pinky ones and one beautiful deep red variety. The white ones would have been nice if they'd been mixed in with brighter colours, but whole containers of white were a bit boring. Nice for scanner photos though.

So despite my intention to grow them as perennials, I think I'll take most of them out at the end of the year and start again. They're full of seed heads though, and it would be a pity to waste them. Maybe I'll take a walk along the tram lines ....

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Garden Bloggers' Carnival : Day Four

It's the last day of the Garden Blogger's Retro Carnival, and the theme is Added Value - or Ten for the Price of One.

Some people don’t have individual pages for their posts so had to link to an entire archive page. Great – we get more value for one click! Lady Luz linked to last February’s posts – she nominated the post for Feb 15th, but I enjoyed lots of the others too. Check out the picture of the chameleon as you scroll down.

Andee, the gardener in Chacala also linked to an archive page. Go down to the bottom to read about Learning to Garden in Chacala – and some small problems in cross-cultural communication. While you’re getting there - enjoy all the photos.



Carol of May Dreams Gardens has only linked to one post, but in it she links to the ten posts which she feels serve best as an introduction to her blog. So ten for the price of one again!

My contribution? This time last year I was having fun taking scanner photos. So here are some of the photos - ten of them, naturally.

And that's it for this edition of the Garden Blogger's Retro Carnival. Except that I have to end with a confession ... I've lost two links. Somebody sent me links to two posts - one about a porcupine and the other about bugs. And I've lost them. They arrived after the first carnival day, which had wildlife for it's theme, but I was going to include them anyway.I checked the posts out, but must have forgotten to save the message before I cancelled it. If it's you, please send them again - they were great posts. My comments box also went peculiar for a while last month, just as people were submitting links. I hope I got everything, but if you were expecting to see your post and it hasn't appeared - Blogger strikes again. Send them again, and we'll have a postcript day.

I hope you've enjoyed the Carnival - I certainly have. I really enjoyed all the posts, and it was specially nice to come across a few blogs which I'd not seen before. Several people have asked if the Carnival is going to be a regular event. Well, I don't know about regular, but I do have an idea for another one - with a difference. Watch this space!

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A Walk in the Park

I had two appointments this morning, by chance both on opposite sides of one of Milan's big central parks. The first one finished earlier than I expected, and I found myself with forty five minutes to kill. It was a glorious day - about fifteen degrees, bright sunshine and a clear blue sky, and instead of jumping on the tram as I'd planned, I decided to walk through the park.



I knew the trees were going to be stupendous even before I got inside, and I wasn't disappointed. Of course, I didn't have my camera with me, but I rushed around picking up leaves (good job I didn't have to open my briefcase when I got to my next client) for the scanner. Yes, I know I'd promised myself I wasn't going to spend any more time playing with the scanner when I should be working, but it was stronger than I was.




The yellow leaves are gingko - the tree I talked about in the last post. But I'm not sure about the others. Trees are not my strong point- I can manage the most common British ones but that's about all. The pointy one is perhaps some sort of maple? And the green and yellow ones are lime? But I give up on the red ones. They're about five inches long, and the ones that hadn't yet turned red were a bright orange colour. For some reason it didn't come out well on the scanner, so I excluded them from the pictures.

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Autumn

Autumn is full swing here now, although up to now temperatures have still been fairly mild - it's about 10° today, and that's more or less the lowest daytime temperature we've had. But it's been quite windy some days and the leaves are falling fast - I've been collecting them for scanner photos.

I wished I'd had my camera yesterday as I went down a road lined with gingko trees. Gingkos are used quite a lot in Milan as roadside trees and in the autumn are just a mass of yellow leaves. I was on the bus unfortunately, so couldn't steal one for the scanner. I'll have to find time to go back ...

For those of you who asked, I've still not been able to make the Chrysanthemum photo from a couple of posts ago clickable. I don't know why. These ones aren't either, so it must be something to do with them coming from the scanner and not the camera.

I'm still swamped with work and have hardly put my nose out on the balcony this week. I must find the time this weekend as there are bulbs still to be planted and things need moving into their winter positions. I suspect that when the temperature does drop it will do so with a vengeance.

The change in the birds that are around is a sure sign of winter coming. The starlings that a couple of weeks ago were massed in hundreds of thousands over the city are now long gone, and this morning I saw a robin in the garden. The one we had last year (the same, or this one's Dad?) had clearly established the horse chestnut tree outside my bedroom window as the centre of his territory. All through the winter I was woken up at 2 am by his singing. I'd wake up and lie snug in bed listening to this beautiful liquid song. I hope he comes back this year ...

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Chrysanthemums

Over two weeks since I posted - I've been swamped with work. The Indian summer didn't last long - a few days after I wrote the temperature suddenly dropped to ten degrees, and everything on the balcony went into shock. Not so much due to the temperature itself, as to the overnight change. Luckily we had forewarning, and I brought in the last of the more delicate plants. Around about the same time there was a really interesting post on Hanna's blog explaining exactly why some plants are more susceptible to cold than others. It had never occurred to me to think about why plants didn't like the cold before.

The temperature has now gone up a bit to around about 12° daytime temperatures and everything has got over the initial shock and settled down. My chrysanthemums are now in full bloom, and I used one of the big white ones to take the scanner photo below. The idea is not original - it comes from an artist called Katinka Mason. My personal favourite is her White Calla Lily. But when I tried, I was amazed how easy it was. You just lay the flower on the scanner and leave the top open while you scan. I use them for desktop wallpaper as you can use the black space for your icons.

I managed to grab a bit more sun last week though as I had to go to Casablanca for work. More about that in the next post ...

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