Category: General
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Little Beasties everywhere
Birds and bees don’t change all that much between countries and gardens. But there were quite a few little beasties I had never seen before, including a large Western Whip Snake, crawling at speed straight up the embankment, hissing and spitting, because Monty the cat was in full pursuit… Ants Billions of ants in all…
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Waiting
“Garten heisst Warten” – a German phrase I coined a few years back in my Swiss garden. It means that gardening is mostly about waiting: Waiting until you can plant stuff.Waiting for stuff to grow. Waiting for stuff to bloom. Waiting for stuff to ripen so you can eat it.Waiting for next year. Here, in…
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Starting the trimming season
It is February and beautiful outside and my fingers are itching to get going in the garden. It’s too early to plant but I can start trimming some shrubs. There are two small olive trees that are overgrown with inner branches actually growing backwards on themselves. As they have been planted in half-shade they’re also…
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Winter is coming
In November we continued with cleaning up, re-planting, and with covering all the naked earth in an effort to keep it from getting washed out any further. After cleaning out this corner, it turned out that the tall Yucca had actually been planted in a wooden pot with iron bands – once upon a long, long…
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Jungle Queen
The previous owners of the house grew some vegetables, but the did not live here fulltime and when here didn’t have much time for the garden. So the shrubs and trees had more or less been left to their own devices for several years. And created quite a jungle of impenetrable, intertwined shrubbery full of…