Covet

I posted on Facebook a couple of days ago about some neglected pots on a balcony which I can see from our balcony. My question was whether it was ok to think: “I could do something with those”. Here they are. The reactions were quite interesting. Norfolkdoc asked me what it said about me that I was coveting pots. Someone else suggested that I abseil down there, and several people suggested I should call round and then offer newly grown plants in return. In fact, I suspect that the answer is - as it often is around here - that the flat is now rented out because the owner has moved away, and the tenant (a bloke who sometimes sits out for a smoke) has no interest in growing stuff whilst he is there. So I guess that even if I called round and asked if I could do something with the pots, the tenants would say that there was nothing they could do about it….

Anyway, today was a good day in gardening terms. I popped round to hazelh’s in the afternoon (both of us too busy for more than a quick chat) to collect the pot which was clearly no longer needed when she planted out the fuchsia we popped round there at the weekend. However, to enhance and improve our ongoing exchange process, she also offered me a couple of balcony railing pots that Paddy, the head garden redesigner, gave her for which she has no use. They are identical to my new balcony railing pot, except they are missing their trays underneath. And they are a sort of blue colour, and hazelh was concerned about whether this would match our (non-existent) colour scheme.

Anyway, having retrieved the pot that the fuchsia was in, I immediately put it to good use by digging a grass out of a pot where it was taking over, but equally probably not thriving as well as it could, and putting it in there. Hopefully, there will be no mishaps as a result of the transplantation, but it’s always a risk. I also found a load of corms in the pot which didn’t seem to have grown this year. I think these come from a freesia that was in there last year but never really got going. Anyway, I put them back for now and covered them with compost, but I think I will move them to a separate pot for the winter. I have no current plans to put any other plants in that pot, having removed the grass. It already has a sedum 'Bertram Anderson' which is going well, although it could benefit from having its own pot, so we might put it into one of the balcony railing troughs and there is a green groundcover thing that is ok, although not exciting. All three were ‘plants for small gardens’ purchases in April this year.

The new balcony railing troughs will probably be planted with spring bulbs (dwarf varieties to prevent mishaps with the wind…), once we get them. Today’s transplantation was a useful way of drawing the line between the working day and the evening, which usually takes the form of some exercise, but equally can be something like a bit of light gardening.

Work-wise, things went well. I popped one paper back to my co-author in an almost ready to go state, and I now have a putative home for the other paper, if it passes review. I hope to get the footnotes sorted out tomorrow for that, and the submission made. But realistically it might take a few more days.

Overall, a pretty constructive day. I like those.