keep in touch with nature

Went for a walk around the lake yesterday. It was nice, I don’t know why don’t we do it more often. (It’s a teeny tiny lake, took us about 20mins all in all.)

Still eating my ‘terrace’ strawberries. Woot! :) The forest strawberries are a disappointment, though. Millions of flowers, many fruit starting to form, but they all seem to disappear soon after forming?! I guess they don’t like my terrace. shrug

The tomato started to ripen. I’m predicting a tomato salad on the next week’s menu! (I almost feel sad about eating something I grew. Almost. ;))

_{Btw, the more I know about the ways of the world, the more I want to just go home and cook and bake and knit and garden… :/}

A quite literal touch and not of the kind I enjoy. I was stung by a wasp on the underside of my arm. Not very pleasant. Trying to see the positive side: 1. I remembered to take the peaceful approach of driving insects away – blowing at it, instead of swatting (didn’t help, but hey, I tried); 2. I remembered my Mum’s natural remedies (crushed parsley and ice) instead of going for pharmaceutical big guns right away (again, didn’t help, but hey, I tried); 3. I can tell wasps from bees and am not as big an idiot regarding this matter as the local TV station seems to be (when reporting on a woman dying after a wasp sting, they showed only bees).

In other news, I’m enjoying a second crop of strawberries from the terrace and waiting for a single tomato to ripen. I also discovered my Mum gave me the wrong seedlings – not cherry tomatoes but oxheart. That means she’s no better at telling seedlings apart than I am, even with her 30+ years of gardening experience. Ha! ;)

My cherry tomato plants are getting ready to bloom!

I have two forest strawberries growing. I doubt they’ll ever get ripe in this weather, but hey, at least that means my artificial pollination technique got better. :)

I harvested and ate my strawberry crop yesterday – all one of it. :))) I need to improve my artificial pollination technique. Or find where the nearest bees are located and show them the way to my terrace. Sigh.

A frog choir by the lake this morning.

Sitting on the steps under the canopy, watching the sun rays mix with the hail, biking home through the forest largely ignored part of the park after it all stopped 10 minutes later.

Planting and staking tomatoes on the terrace. (I’d done it first and then went to search for “how to”s on the net and of course, I’ve done it all wrong, but who cares.)

Say hello to Miss Strawberry…

_{She may not look like much, but there’s a bright future for her!}

There’s a single little green strawberry on the plant! I’m checking on it every day.

My Mum gave me seedlings of cherry tomatoes to plant. I’m moving into “proper” gardening territory, very exciting! :)

I discovered http://www.squarefootgardening.com/ today and got completely overexcited. I think I’m turning into my Mum. :))

Strawberries are still blooming. No signs of actually bearing fruit in the foreseeable future. I reverted to some artificial pollination. I’m hoping it’ll speed things up. ;)

All the irises on the terrace are in bloom! I’m excited because I discovered there’s a yellow-blue kind of iris growing here! It looks very fancy next to the common, blue kind.

After checking on irises on the terrace every day, waiting to see them bloom, I go away for a week or two and when I come back, bam! all of them are in bloom. Sneaky flowers. But they’re my favorites, I forgive them. :)