dappling of shade

heza — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 17:12:34 +0000

Mr. Progagation Green House

Hopefully you can see from the picture that there is still snow on the ground and the flurries are still falling as I type this post. I get the hint that others in the neighborhood are just as fed up as I am. Even with fresh snow on the ground last weekend, no one was taking their sleds out. Probably they are like A and I, stuck at home with colds and trying to save energy to Starkbierfest it this evening. Nevertheless I’m determined to start my garden and grow some strong seedlings for the coming spring. Repeat after me: “Betcha by golly, Spring IS coming!”

It was time to invest in a decent greenhouse or Anzuchtschale (as apposed to old Langnese ice cream tubs) and some sterile soil since last year my babies took a bit too long to get ready for the balcony chaos. For 12 Euro I got this plastic greenhouse at Samenhaus.de and 20 pellets from coconut husk. We will be again trying to grow flowers, an herb garden and see if we can’t increase our yummy tomato and baby pumpkin yields this year. The flower seeds going into the greenhouse will be Portulakröschen or moss rose because we’ll need flowers that tolerate my forgetfulness. The next dry loving plant is the African Delosperma – Hardy ice plant or in German, Mittagsblume. I seem to get along well with succulents. The more attention seekers will be the Violets/Pansies (but I’ll call them violas, yay! in German: Hornveilchen) and the blue Forget-me-nots or in German, Vergißmeinnicht. We’ll see if I remember the names in both languages. I was very mindful that this year none of these flowers reach a high above 15 cm and cause our neighbor below to birth a cow at my front door.

Whether the sage, thyme, lavender, and oregano survived this year’s winter is still up in the air. I know I killed my jalapeño two weeks ago by accident after I left it in freezing temperatures on the balcony over night so its seed brothers are going under the dome along with more cilantro, thai basil, and tarragon. I hope this year will be plentiful.

a bit of Sog

heza — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 21:35:12 +0000

The deluge continues over Germany, throughout Bavaria, in Munich along with the cold that won’t quit. I’ll be making a doctor’s visit soon if the nose draining and donkey cough persist through the weekend. Another thing that gets to me is the way weather folk talk about rain:

“Am Flughafen fielen in den letzten 48 Stunden rund 61 Liter pro Quadratmeter, in Oberhaching 78 – gut 17 Liter mehr” -Abendzeitung

Did you get that? 61 liters of rain per cubic meter in 48 hours! It sounds like a mouthful but if you keep in mind that a liter per cubic meter is just a fancy way of saying 1 mm of rainfall, it’s not so intimidating.

Still I like to keep it real and get back to my convoluted English-unit roots. That means our balcony garden probably got somewhere around 2.7 inches of rain in the last two days. Whew. I can rest well knowing that these measurements are totally heavy but still okay compared to the bath tub ranges some are reporting in Austria.

Speaking of balcony garden here’s a collage to document the green thumbs Alex and I are developing.

Who would have thought. Not I because I honestly don’t know what I’m doing. That one purple petunia developed into a gazillion little flower minions in just a couple of weeks. Yes, I put the whole mystery mix package into 5 flower pots and then couldn’t decide which seedlings would experience the ‘pluck and chuck’. Hopefully the flowers survive all this rain for a real photo shoot.

lucid in deutschland » garden

dappling of shade

a bit of Sog