Ecclectic Living Room

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In Praise of Human Nature

I've said before that people in Milan are, in general, not very aware of the quality - or lack of it - of the plants they buy. You see people happily loading their supermarket trolleys with plants that are half dead from lack of water, or which have more yellow leaves underneath than green ones on top. In garden centres, where the quality is better, they'll go for the plants with the most flowers already in full bloom or right at the front of the display. Ideal clients, obviously, for anyone looking to rip off their customers.

So it made me extremely happy yesterday to find someone that refused the opportunity. We were invited to lunch with some friends who we'd not seen for a while, and I'd decided to get each of them a pot plant as a late Christmas present. So yesterday morning, just before we were due to leave, I went round to our local garden centre - only to find it closed. Being Sunday, absolutely no other shops in the neighbourhood were open, and so I found myself stuck without a present.

Then I remembered a flower kiosk some way away, which usually had container plants as well as cut flowers. Although I must have passed it several times a month for the last fifteen years, I'd never actually bought anything there, but I thought it was worth going to see if it was open. It was, but the only plants they had were two pots of cyclamen, very clearly the worse for wear. I said to the man " I really wanted a couple of plants like those ..." intending to go on to say "but unless you've got anything of a bit better quality, I'll have cut flowers." However, I didn't get the chance. He interrupted me immediately saying, "No, I won't sell you those. They've been overwatered and they're not worth the money." I looked at him somewhat amazed, said that I'd realised, complimented him on his honesty, and then chose the cut flowers which I wanted. At which point he said that if I thought I could nurse the cyclamen back to health he'd give them to me, as he had no intention of selling them. Wow - they weren't that far gone. So I staggered home with two pots of cyclamen, two bouquets of flowers and with my faith in human nature restored. Not that he's lost out of course - he's just won himself a new regular customer.

PS. Talking of being nice to people - if there is someone whose blog you regularly read and enjoy, show your appreciation by nominating one of their posts for the next Garden Bloggers' Carnival. It's a great way to say thank you. Nominations are starting to come in, but there's room for plenty more. Follow the link for more information.

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A Winter Garden

Returning home after 4 weeks in South India's hot climate (at least in the lowlands) found frost effects on plants in our garden. The garden sage leaves are droopy, the radicchio has been zapped, but the winter salad mix is thriving in one of the flats. The Tuscan kale looks good, as do the ornamental kales. One of the types that I snagged at a local big box store (all I could find at the time) with the pale green leaves and white center is not so pleasing --but the rosy pink ones are OK. The violas look great, lovely blue and purple flowers that brighten the landscape.

The saved mail has lots of seed and plant catalogs to peruse; the first order of business is to get fresh seeds for late winter plantings of greens, broccolini, mache, and lettuce, as well as ordering seed potatoes and onion sets. The garlic is hopefully enjoying the bit of winter rain that we've had; the drought is still with us, but perhaps we'll have enough rain to recharge the top layers of soil for planting and give trees and shrubs a welcome respite from the drought of summer and fall.

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Crassula Ovata

I posted last year about my Crassula Ovata, although at the time I didn't know what it was called. I asked if anyone could identify it for me, and Muppet very kindly did, though by an alternative name Crassula Argentea. I then checked on the net and found that it was supposed to flower at Christmas. Would mine? It hadn't last year, and the net was full of people saying that theirs never had. I found out they would only flower if they had natural conditions of reduced daylight hours - well, mine had been inside all last winter, under artificial lighting. Maybe that was the answer. I decided to risk the cold and leave it outside, though sheltered this year. And the result is in the top photo. Not a whisper of a flower.

So imagine my surprise when I got to Germany for Christmas and found two large specimens in full flower growing in the entrance hall to my sister-in-law's apartment. What, I wondered, was the secret? So when I got back I set about some more research and came up with the site of The Liverpool Branch of the British Cactus and Succulent Society. It's not definitive, just an enthusiast (Jim Mercer) writing about his own experience. But I like it for that.

According to Mr Mercer, various conditions have to be fulfilled if the plants are to flower. Apart from the light conditions mentioned before, he suggests that the plants must be about four years old and a foot tall. Mine is just about that, perhaps a bit less. If that's all though, next year there should definitely be flowers.

He also warns against pruning too late in the year as the flowers form at the end of branches. I didn't prune at all this year, so it's not that, but I shall have to sooner or later. Otherwise they can reach 7ft tall! He suggests June as being the optimum time.

Then there's feeding and watering. C. ovata are dormant in summer, but Mr Mercer advises watering and feeding (reduced strength) weekly. Oddly he doesn't talk about feeding in winter when they're active, but in any case I didn't feed at all this summer. Next summer I'll try it.

I suspect the real reason I'm not getting flowers though, is temperature. Mercer recommends greenhouse conditions in winter, with a night-time minimum of 5°C. And in fact, those in my sister-in-law's apartment block must have just about the same conditions. No way I can do that inside the flat, so next year maybe I should try mine in our hallway too. I can see that I'm going to have to spend 2008 being extremely nice to the neighbours ...

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Snow on the antirrhinums

We have had snow this week. Not a lot, and it sooned turned back to rain, but for a few hours the world turned white.

It wasn't unexpected. The first two weeks of January are usually the coldest of the year here, although tradition has it that it should be the last three days of the month which have the bitterest weather. They even have a name - i giorni della merla, or the days of the blackbird. The legend goes that the blackbird was once white, and feared the cold of January so much that one year he decided to lay in a stock of food and spend the whole month holed up in the shelter of an empty tree. At the time, January had only twenty eight days, and on the twenty eighth, after a month of unusually mild temperatures, he decided it was safe to come out. Big mistake. January, angry at the way the bird had tried to trick him, asked February for a loan of three days, and for those days unleashed the worst weather he could find - snow, wind, freezing temperatures and so on. The bird, scared out of his wits, took shelter in an old, unused chimney and waited it out. But when he finally came out, his feathers, coated with soot from the chimney, had become black. And so they have been ever since.

But if the snow wasn't unexpected, the antirrhinums were. Antirrhinums in January ??? And though covered with fleece, the marigolds which I blogged about last month are still going strong. Funny things, plants.

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Comments and Carnivals

When we held the carnival last year, several people said they'd like another one - including a few who never got round to participating last time. One of the suggestions was that we hold it in the "real" carnival week, which I've just realised is really early this year - the first week in February. So we need to get on with it.

It would be boring to repeat the same format though - let's have a carnival with a difference. This time, instead of nominating one of your own posts, nominate a post from someone else's blog. Find a post you've really enjoyed - preferably not a very recent one - and send me the link. I'll publish the link itself (after checking with the other person that it's OK), together with a link to the blog of the nominator. You can send it, like last time, using the Comments box, but as Blogger has locked out a lot of people, I'll also give you an E-mail address. I'm not going to write it in E-mail format to avoid being picked up by spammers, so put the following all together into a continuous address, no capital letters and no spaces (but the hyphen stays), and substitute at for the usual symbol : Susan Swift at Business-Talk . IT

I may be wrong, but Blogger also seems to be playing havoc with my comments again, and I'm once more receiving E-mail notification of comments that never appear on my dashboard and comments appearing on the dashboard which never arrive via E-mail. No problem for those, but I'm worried that some aren't making it at all. So, if you've left a comment recently and I've not published it - I'm sorry, I never got it. Has anyone else noticed the same problem?

I came back from my Christmas holidays in Germany yesterday, ahead of the rest of my family as I have to work. And managed to leave the lead to connect the camera to the computer behind. So I can't download any new photos, sorry. You'll have to make do with clipart till next week ...

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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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