Where did the week go?

Interesting how time flies by when you have 'vacation' (I'm still working four hours a day, although from home). I've done nothing of the stuff I thought I would do. Instead I've prioritized the family when I've been free - which means we've spent a lot of time in the childrens part of our city library (it's been rainy weather here in Sweden).

Well, I did bring out the seeds I put in the fridge for artificial winter a few months ago (ramsons and blackberries if I'm correct - I haven't looked it up in my diary yet). And we've visited one of the swedish plantmalls, but all I bought was a bag of cashew nuts. The few herb plant they sold looked sad. This is typical when you treat plants as groceries and the season of the item is over.

I've been pondering the results of my little poll. The swedish readers of Parkettodlaren wanted me to move to a house in the country, while my international (mostly from the US) readers wanted me to stay in the city. My theori is that a small home in the country is more deeply rooted in Sweden. Our collective subconsious tells us that farming (ie. growing vegetables in this case) should be done at the feet of a red little cottage with a red little barn outside town. In the US urban homesteds are more common (they are virtually unheard of in Sweden) and movements like urban permaculture have more followers. This way you don't need to leave the city to live the good life. How big this difference is is beyond me to tell, and the poll are too small to be statistically reliable, but I've noticed it before so I find it funny that it showed in such a small sample.

Photo reportage from the Indoor Gardener

This is the feet of the cherry tree on the balcony. The tree itself is balding (I think it dried when spring set off), so I spare you that picture. This looks rather nice, eventhough the pansies have seen better days. Yesterday I poked some nasturtium seeds into the soil to have lush green leaves and perhaps a few flowers to succeed them. If you look closely you can see the first leaves of the runnerbean 'Enorma' I planted close to the tree. The idea is that the bean will grow up into the crown and cover the bald patches. Let's see how far it goes considering we've already reached July.


Potatoes growing indoors... I haven't used added light for this plant, that's why the stems are so thin and vinelike, but the plant is still decorative. I've completely forgotten which kind of potato it is - I put two kinds to sprout and forgot to write the names on the container. Don't repeat my mistake - it's easy to grab a marker. It'll be interesting to see how many tubers the plant will be able to form in these circumstances, I'll return with a spud count later on.


The tomatoes have had a hard time standing the hot and dry weather eventhough they stand in selfwatering containers. Thrips and illnesses are ramping about in the leaves, yet the plants still sets fruit. Now when we've finally cleaned the balcony (on the last day without rain here in Uppsala...) these are first in line to be treated. I have to cut them down entirely, I'm afraid, but tomatoes are easy to grow so I'm not that down. Besides, this gives me a chance to try those heirloom tomatoes I was given by Sesam (the swedish association preserving heirloom vegetables) on the Nordic Gardens fair this spring.


Ins't this sad? The plants' and my health are mirroring each other, so I think this is a good picture of my own state. (I've been home ill so many times it's ridiculous, fact is I'm ill while I'm writing this.) I need to cut down quite a lot here too, but I think I'll spare the lemon thyme, it've survivied everything, even the thrips. I'm still not rich enough to by biological thrips control, so I have to stay content with the oldfashioned methods of extreme cleanlyness and perhaps a small dose of pine soap water every now and then.


Last, but not least, the worn beauties of the study, three containers of dead nasturtium 'Alaska'. They didn't stood a chance when the heat set in since I didn't use the room and could see what was happening before it was too late. Now I've actually set up a working corner here (you can see my table and my knitting machine in the background) so perhaps the next set of plants will fare better. I'm tempted to take the easy way out and just remove the dead plants and poke seeds in the soil, but I won't; I don't know if there's "wiltering illness" (couldn't find the english term - sorry, but I think the translation says it all) in it.

Well then, now you know what I have to work with. Hopefully I'll make most of it in the week to come - depending on how much I can do per day.

Rebirth

This is one of the two runnerbeans 'Enorma' I sowed in February. They were standing in "preliminary" pots in the library for a long time, so long the project they were meant for staled. In the beginning of June I rearranged the balcony (another stale project) and put them both outdoors without any previous weening. The retribute was swift - they died within days.

The only green things left were a pair of leaves at the end of one stem. Since I'm a softy I couldn't bear myself to throw the plant away, so I waited a few days to see the last leaves die.

They didn't.

Instead new leaves were forming, and now buds have sprouted along the entire stem. I don't think this plant will be as lush and green as it could have been, but I hope to see it healthy enough and perhaps even set some flowers. I think this is why I keep growing things - it's so easy to be forgiven, and every now and then you get to watch rebirths like this.

I think this entire place need a rebirth by the way. The last weeks in Sweden have been hot, and this has affected the plants - mostly because I haven't been able to water as fast as I need. The thrips have had a merry old time, devouring my nasturtiums (*sob* they were beautiful - and I didn't get around to post a photo on the blog) and severly injured my tomatoes. I know the tomatoes are old and in need for a pension, but that's not an excuse for vandalism! In my dark moments I ponder throwing away every plant, clean every window thoroughly, and start from point zero. In my more sensible moments I wonder if this is really needed - it's not like it's an every day operation.

I've had a hard time sleeping in this heat, so I stop here before I entangle my squishy brain in some deeper gardening theories. If you think the light is strange in the picture above it's because I took the photo at 21.10 without flash - this is the season of white nights in Sweden. Take care untill next time!

Tough decisions

You may have noticed that I've been absent from the blog for a few days - it's been a time of tough decisions and it's been exhausting. This thursday we looked at a house with a 7500 square meter garden (1.9 acres) outside Uppsala - and the entire family fell in love. Not only is the garden big, it's beautiful, with a barn suitible for any kind of companies you might wan't to start, a guest cottage good as a home for elderly inlaws or as a writing cottage for a writing mother. The son ran aorund the grounds bubbling with joy, and daddy concluded that not only was there plenty of lawns to run around, but also a small ravine to climb through - when our tiny heir gets a little older.

When feeling like that it's hard to make the decision to not buy the house. It's too far from other things we want in our lives; the right kind of schools, libraries and museums. Yes, you read it right; we are a family who wants at least one library and one museum close by to feel at home - a garden is the cherry on top. Besides, we would be moving so far away from friends that we would loose contact, and when there is a draw between people (ie. friends and family) and material things people is prioritized.

I say it yet again, it was a tough decision. Perhaps it sounds strange, but it was comforting when the broker called and we found out that bidding had already reached a level 250.000 SEK (~$30.400) above the prize we had set as our top bid (btw this was almost half a million kronas /$60.000 above the starting bid). I hope the house is bought by someone who will care for it as good as the previous owners - it's rare to see something that has been loved to that extent.

Another tough decision I had to make was regarding the future of Indoor Gardener. It's been dreary to blog for some time now, and I've toyed with the idea of shutting down completely. I don't want to; I'm almost at the conclusion of my experiment - I'm starting to get gardening into my bones and know what plants to chose if I want to harvest the year round. The "only" thing left is to trim routines and habits to actually get it to work. But now when I'm working I'm short of time, so short that I need to cut back on blogging to get time for the indoor gardens. After all, an Indoor Gardener blog without indoor vegetables would be rather stupid.

So I've decided to cut back on updates but keep on blogging. For the time being Indoor Gardener will be updated on Tuesdays, perhaps with one bonus post or another when I decide a plant needs to be photographed :)

The time I'll gained by these meassurements will be spent on different things - as to the indoor gardening I'll fight critters and diseases. I'm very tired of seeing a beatiful plant rise from the seed, only to stoop back again a few days covered with a variety of spots. This means war. In addition I have a couple of large projects boiling that needs a lot of basic preparations; I need to teach myself how to use an asortment of softwares and do thorough research in several areas. The advantage of taking this time ("time", I hope will be about a year) is that when I return to full speed I'll be able to send Indoor Gardener through several channels to cyber space.

Thus, Indoor Gardener will be in an controlled blog fade, but it's a fade that leads to something good.

Happy Midsummer!

Well... actually we overslept the Midsummer's Eve celebrations. When we finally arrived to the festive ground the Midsummer pole was errected and the dancing had begun. We didn't mope though, we grabbed hot dogs, strawberry cake and lemonade instead. The organizers at our place have class - the cakes they choose to put under the strawberries (the strawberries are the important thing - you can be pretty creative with the rest of the cake, this is not a tradition set in stone, just a prefered dish) were a delicious cheescake and a sticky choclatecake. But this felt a bit 'cut short', so I promised my son we'll celebrate a real Midsummer's Eve next year.

Happy Midsummer all of you!

Murphy makes multiple attacks...

Ever since I wrote that the plants would do fine since it was overcast outside my windows the sun has shone brightly on a blue sky here in Uppsala. Hrmpf! That's what you get for being a too confident amateur meteorogist. And don't even think about this weather lasting to Midsummer's Eve (a major holiday in Sweden where people - at least in theory - gathers for a big feast outdoors and dance around maypoles as well as dons traditional costumes). In my experience every Midsummer's Eve has been rainy since Stoneage. I can't believe that noone has started manufacturing traditional clothes in oilcloth.

Yes, I'm grumpy. The IRS lost the forms I completed for my income tax return, and now they want to charge me money for "not sending them in". This means I'm standing (yes, standing - the leg is protesting) and make copies of sketches (was I sentient enough to make copies of the finished forms in May - Ooooooo no!) and complete new forms as if the house was burning. The plants will have to wait another day for water - I have a fine to fend off.

Oh, and do continue to vote in the poll if I should chose a house in the country or a flat in the city. Interesting differences are starting to show between my swedish and my english readers - I promise to analyse them when the poll is closed :)

And I threw away the shoes...

*cough* *hrm* I really need to look over how I live my life. For some weeks now I've walked around with shoes that gave me an inflammation in my leg, though I didn't care much about it - untill last night when I stepped down from a chair and it felt like something broke in a muscel. Ever since my style of walking has looked more like something worthy ministry of silly walks rather than me walking somewhere, so I called my local health center and asked if I could borrow a pair of crutches.
"Sure," they said "just pop in!"
I went over (the center lies within five minutes walk from my home) and found that the computer system had broken down. Doctors patrolled the corridors with weary eyes asking
"Who are you? Are you my patient?"
The nurse who handed me the crutches was on top of things though. She noticed me in the waiting room and adjusted them for my size before I limped into her office. I was impressed. She left a note at the reception desk to make it possible for me to officialy return the crutches and I then I skipped out of the building.

Believe me, if you've been limping for almost a day it feels like skipping when you get a pair of crutches.

I discovered that it's hard watering with a can while walking with crutches, and I suspect my gardens will have to stand a bit of maltreatment in the days to come. Fortunately it's cloudy and I watered the plants this saturday, and, even more furtunately, I can ask the indoor hubby for help when they get thirsty again.

I've put up a poll in the right margin - you know that we are looking for a new place to live. My problem is that I can't decide wether we should move to a small flat downtown or a bigger house in the country which is cheaper and makes it possbile for me to garden big (in that case I'd have to set up a second blog called "Indoor Gardener Outdoors" or something). Some more input on the subject would be very helpfull, thanks!