Work on the balcony

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Work on the balcony

I made up for the other days when I’ve not done anything on the balcony as I spent at least 2 1/2 hours working outside! You might wonder what work could occupy me for so long on a balcony! Let me tell you what I’ve done today – I promise not to take up 2 1/2 hours to tell you!

The bag of compost I ordered online arrived. I bought it to plant the ‘Golden Wedding’ rose given to us by one of my brothers 3 months ago. Up until now it has had to stay in the pot it came in. But I had earmarked a square tub for it that had no plants growing in it this summer. It had a few spring bulbs but nothing else really. I emptied it out & put the new bag of compost with John Innes in it. Then I searched for as many bulbs as I could fine & put them to one side. The old compost was then put in the new compost bag to dispose off at some other moment. I then had to move that tub to the other extreme of the balcony & give the back of it a good sweeping so as to get rid of the past 15 years of cobwebs that had accumulated behind it & also the wall it had been up against all these years. Done that I then had to move an identical tub from the other extreme of the balcony to take its place. Then I had to repeat the previous operation at the other extreme, just that there I have 2 of these tubs. I wanted the tub for the rose closer to the balcony door so we can see it from inside the flat when it is in flower. Eventually I had the 3 tubs in their new positions & set about planting the rose.

I wanted to plant some Daffodils underneath the rose so I went back indoors, found the Daffs & proceeded to plant them in the tub before the rose. Done that I put the rose in the centre & filled in around it with new compost.

There wasn’t really as much compost as I would have liked, although it was a 25lt bag I could have done with a couple of more litres! I pushed some little Crocus corms down into the compost as I had planted the bigger spring bulbs, from the old tub deeper, among the Daffs. I found a few pots with compost still in them from failed Fuchsia cutting & emptied them on top of the new compost.

Then it occurred to me that the Violas I bought on Sunday on my way home from church would look good under the rose & as they flower during mild periods in the winter would give us something other than a square tub of compost with a twig in the centre!

So I planted 12 of the little Violas under the rose. As I still had 12 left I thought they would look good in the other tub alongside, so I put them in there as well.

Now we should have some colour to look at from the balcony door over winter & until the Daffs flower followed later by the rose for the summer! It should look a picture!

• 11 Oct, 2024
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