Balcony gardening

Wednesday was a busy day - bookended by an early trip by bike to the supermarket (where I also used a cloth mask and some disposable gloves that Mr A found in the cupboard in order to reduce the anxiety factor) and participating in a couple of zooms for a friend teaching at Harvard law school. In the first one, we listened to an ex-Prime Minister of Finland, no less, presenting on his (very optimistic) thoughts on the future of the EU after coronavirus. I took centre stage in the second one, extemporising on a number of things that I know only a little bit about.... After my two fairly short sessions, I started to appreciate just how exhausting it must be teaching by zoom, and it would be all the more so if you hadn't actually met the students beforehand (which my colleague had - they had the first few weeks in the classroom before Harvard closed its doors and they dispersed all over the world).

My blip provides a first record of the outcome of my balcony gardening. I'm pleased with the little splashes of colour already appearing. For example, there's a friesia in a pot around the corner which came from Lidl and cost virtually nothing, which is doing very well indeed and a wee rose which is a bit battered but is now perking up as the wind has finally dropped (see extra). The plant on the top right of this picture also came from Lidl, and I'm afraid I lost the label so if someone knows what it is, it would be nice to know. The rest - which came from Plants for Small Gardens are all labelled. The only other thing in this pot is a surviving fuschia, which has been hanging on in this pot for years. I should have probably dug it out, but I didn't have the heart. Let's see now it does now it has mates.