Today was busy with shopkeeping things - printing, sorting, re-stocking, and sorting stuff. Plus bringing parcels to the post office, which is one of the tasks I feel are very pleasant; not only is there a feeling of accomplishment when things are sent off, it also means a nice little walk to the post office and back, sometimes accompanied by a short hop into the shop across the road to stock up on things. Which might include something nice and sweet for the afternoon coffee.

Speaking of coffee, my little coffee plants are coming along nicely:



Some of the batch have gone to a new home (with my mum, and aunt, or friends) and I'll see how the rest does. At least this time I know that they like light, but no direct full sun, and that they need acidic soil (the lack of which probably killed them last time around).

The chili plants are also coming along, though slowly. I already had most of them moved to outside, so they'd have direct sun and fresh air and rain and overall outsideness... but they are back in the wintergarden now, after some losses.

You see, at night... the snails came. They feasted on the chilis, and also on the basil, which is the sorry blurry thing you can see in the foreground here:



Another reason for moving the plants back inside: One day, we came home from a walk and saw a hare hopping through the garden, and I'm pretty sure that he or she's to blame for two chili plants that were bitten off right above the soil! They probably won't come back, as they were still quite young... but I'm determined not to feed the hare with more of my capsicum plants, so inside they'll stay.

 

It's getting really nice, warm, and summery around here! The bees and bumblebees are visiting flowers in bloom, the raspberries are ripening, and the first tomatoes are turning red. It's a delightful time of year... so you're getting some pictures from the current state of things.

First of them all, the flowering hibiscus plant:



Outside, there's lavender and marguerites and carnations:

There's also that green space that cannot be called "lawn" anymore, on account of its lack of grass.



It's mostly a kind of wild creeping thyme these days, interspersed with taller flowers, the occasional stubborn tuft of grass, some moss, and a bare patch here or there. Because of the mass of thyme last year, together with the extreme crunchiness of most plants on the "lawn", we tried out what would happen if there was no mowing of the plants. The result was more thyme (and of course more time, too), and an astonishing plus of insects in the green space. Lots and lots of grasshoppers and cicadas, way more than before. Plus more flowering thyme, and other flowers as well.

Which means we decided to do just the same this year again, with similar results: A lush, beautiful covering of the ground with green thyme (much more dry-resistant than grass, by the way), lots of flowers feeding lots of insects which are supporting more birds in their turn. Last year there was one pass with the lawn-mower in the autumn, to clean things up a little bit, and probably we'll do the same this year. Not mowing also means that there is more space for more pretty wild flowers... so yay for a tiny bit of wilderness in the middle of civilisation!

There's new shiny things here! Well, actually they are not shiny at all...

Almost exactly four weeks ago, I ate a passionfruit and then placed the seeds into a little dish with soil. I did manage to keep it moist for the four weeks, and guess what has now started to germinate?



Right! Now I'm very curious to see if they will grow, and survive, and maybe even flower at some point.

Another thing that is now finally sprouting, after weeks of hanging out in the soil, is this avocado seed:



And finally, also new, also not shiny, but still delighting me a lot - new spindle whorls have arrived, and I've taken some photos already, to update those in the online shop.



There's now a wider range of weights available, from around 9 g (and very few even lighter ones) to up to 50 g. New stone whorls are also here, and taking pictures of them is on my list for tomorrow...

 

I've encountered a few bonus technical problems while editing, so you're getting this picture of our current guest in the wintergarden:



She seems to like it there... apparently both the nasturtium leaves and the mexican mini-cucumbers are to her taste. At least that's what we assume from the holes in them!

This is what happens if you don't realise that this kind of flower (Bleiwurz) is not too resistant against frost:



I can't remember seeing them freeze spectacularly like this in autumn, so possibly it was just the time of year. They'll recover, though, and they still have some time to do so until they are scheduled to bloom.

I did take care to cover the fig for the last few nights, to protect them against the Ice Saints. Which is very important, because:



Figs!

There's also the first tomatoes hanging around in the winter garden. The plant is from last year, which explains why it's already working on fruit:



I managed to get another tomato plant through the winter as well, but since it didn't really get going, I finally threw it out. This one, though... definitely a keeper, if it will keep.



I have also finally done what I've been thinking about for years now: Try and raise some passionflower plants. They have beautiful flowers, and I find the fruit quite tasty. Our supermarket happened to have some purple passionfruit... so now I'm waiting for the seeds to germinate. Which can take a few weeks, according to the internet. We'll see!

There's been a debate for years now about whether to feed birds year-round, or not. I've heard pros and cons for that, but never followed the debate really closely, as we're usually not feeding the birds (our neighbours upstairs and next door do that in winter, and I figured that would be enough).

Yesterday, though, I stumbled across a post on my Facebook feed about the dangers of feeding birds with the wrong feed in spring and summer - as that will actually kill their young. If you read German, you can read the full explanation here. For those of you not reading German, here's the short rundown:

Feeding birds during summer, especially in areas where they have little natural feed, is generally a good thing. But it has to be the right feed, else it will cause more harm than help. Suet-based feeds and fatty kernels are for winter feeding only; in summer, you should only feed small seeds from grass and wild flowers that also occur naturally in the area you live in. Another thing suitable for summer feeding is fresh or freshly killed insects. Never feed dried insects, as their salt content is too high for both adult and young birds.

One of the common statements is that the feed offered at feeding stations will only be consumed by the adult birds, who will feed "proper" things, such as insects, to their offspring. This is, unfortunately, not the case. The adults will also feed their young with the fatty seeds or suet-based feeds which are so easy to get from the feeding station. The small chicks cannot digest these foods; they block their intestines, and the chicks die over the course of several days with severe colics and constipation. (The German article linked to above also includes pictures, if you'd like to see what this looks like. Scroll down the page. Not for the faint of heart.) If they do survive, they often suffer misformations due to the malnutrition (too much fat, too little protein) from the inappropriate food. (Even winter feeding with fat food only can have negative consequences, as this study shows.)

So if you feed birds in your place - please take care to feed appropriate things only. The best way to support wild birds in your area is creating an environment where they find enough spaces to hide, build their nests, and where there are plants teeming with insect life so they can catch enough food for themselves and their brood. (Lawns are overrated anyways - go for a wild flower meadow instead. Not only will that be much more colourful, it will also save you all the work of lawn mowing...)

This year will definitely be a year of more gardening than usual, due to the reasons you all know. In an attempt to a) have more variety in plants and b) more order in the seed stash, I've put all of the old seeds of some kinds into earth.

As expected, some of them just did not do anything at all - they were too old. I was especially sad about that being the case with my chili seeds, as my plants have all died, and I was so fond of the colours of the Ecuador Purple.

A week or so ago, I remembered that I have some home-grown dried and roughly ground-up chili in my spice rack, so I spiced up a flower pot... and lo and behold, these have actually sprouted:



It will take a while to find out whether they are Ecuador Purple, or the other kind (a no-name random one). I'll happily do that, however.

Some of the old seeds, it turns out now, only took a lot longer to germinate. I'm sort of flooded with tomatoes, accordingly... the day will come when I'll try to get some of them a new home. Soon-ish.

In other sprouting news, the willows are now really working hard at growing back:



There's daisies blooming:



and, of course, the neighbour's bees are still getting their free drinks here. (He's promised to pay for them with honey at the end of the year...)



(All hail the good macro lens on the camera...)