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February 20, 2012 by Flâneur Gardener

Because I took a day and a half off at the end of last week to visit my parents I had to do some (LOADS) work on Sunday, and I decided to just do it from home, rather than go into the office. And this is what my work space looked like; forsythia in bloom and dogwood just on the cusp of showing its leaves…

There is a bunch of forsythia and dogwood in each of the windows in the sitting and dining room, and though some fortsythia branches are blooming more than others (I really need to get those pruning secateurs out this year!) they make a wonderful display of spring. Even if the branches on the dining table might be slightly over-sized… It looks like I’ve stuck a small tree in the middle of the table!

My mother wants to buy my husband a rose for his birthday (and he knows this), and I’m considering L.D. Braithwaite. Does anybody have any experience with this Austin rose? It looks stunning, and it seems easy to take care of, but of course sellers might be deceptive…

Also, my Mum and I have hatched a plan to attempt growing dahlias from seed. I will order the seeds, split up the packages and send her half – along with copies of the seed packets – and then we shall see what happens. We both want bold, exuberant flowers for little money, so we will be ordering some seed mixes for large dahlias. I do realise this will mean I have to have a windowsill or two of compost in the apartment, but if that’s what it takes…

Posted in Ambitious Border, dahlias, Family, garden, other gardens, Roses, seeds, shopping | 18 Comments »

Plans for Friday

February 15, 2012 by Flâneur Gardener

Tomorrow I’m travelling across the country to Jutland after work to visit my parents and see how they’re getting on. My Dad’s doing worse these days, which is really no great surprise. It seems it can only go one way now, and that’s down-hill.

So on Friday my parents and I will be going to a church across the bay to see if we can find my Dad a good plot in their cemetery when the time comes. My mother has vetoed their local cemetery since it’s dull and drab and has no charm whatsoever, and she wants a pretty place to visit when my father dies.

South side

This is the church. It’s positively tiny, but rather pretty I find.

North side

And the view looks amazing, and it seems quite fitting that the cemetery should have a view of that same island with a medieval fortress ruin that my parents have a view of from their sitting room.

View

The interior looks rather cute, too; it’s not too big, so it’s a good scale for a small funeral. My Dad being – to the best of my knowledge – the only person in my family who is still a member of the Church of Denmark will have a traditional funeral ceremony, so it’s nice that it’s not some cavernous, vaulted church but this small intimate space instead. (According to Wikipedia it seats 82, which is more than plenty for our family and friends.

Interior

Some might find it slightly morbid that we’re making all these arrangements before he dies, but I quite like it. It won’t be a series of rushed decisions after he dies and a lot of stress and arrangements to cope with; just a plan that needs to be taken out of the drawer, dusted off and set in motion.

My mother and I will do the flowers for the coffin together, like we did when my mother’s father died. Seasonal flowers, of course, so that can’t be planned in advance, though I suspect we have both started thinking about what the various months will have to offer.

It’s all terribly undramatic, really. It’s a punch in the guts that you know is coming, so right now it’s all about being ready for it.

Fotos courtesy of Wikipedia.

Posted in Family | 14 Comments »

Mr. Dalloway said he would buy the flowers himself…

February 14, 2012 by Flâneur Gardener

On this Valentine’s day I have received not as much as a dandelion from my husband! Then again, nor have I sent him anything, so I guess that makes it fair enough, especially since we really don’t give a d*** about this date. However, to all of you who do celebrate Valentine’s, please receive my best wishes for a lovely day with or without romance.

Anyway, as the title of this post indicates, purchases have been made! Seeds!!! Though only one of the packets was actually flower seeds (stocks); the rest were radishes, kohlrabi and kale, since I need some brassicas to fill the beds where I had beans and peas last year. And kale is pretty, isn’t it? Perhaps not as showy as flowers, but it has a lovely texture to its curled leaves.

(And since the slugs didn’t attack my radishes last year I’m hoping they’ll also leave the kohlrabi and kale alone, though this might be wishful thinking. I’d much rather have my kale eaten by butterfly larvae than by slugs!)

Posted in seeds, shopping, vegetable garden | 10 Comments »

Accepting Winter

February 14, 2012 by Flâneur Gardener

All right. So my spring header was a tad premature… I’ve now replaced it with a suitably wintery image, which means I have a complete set of headers for the seasons:

Spring

summer

Autumn

Winter

Autumn and winter are views from the apartment, but then that’s quite fitting, considering that our garden is a summer garden. -And the winter picture was taken this morning, and the view really WAS that blue! It looked amazing, and I’m really annoyed that my phone couldn’t take a less grainy image of it. Still, there is charm in imperfection, as most gardeners have to claim, right?

Posted in autumn, blogging, spring, Summer, winter | 6 Comments »

The work-free garden

January 29, 2012 by Flâneur Gardener

We are fortunate to have a stunning garden right outside our 4th-floor Copenhagen apartment. The Assistens Cemetery is immaculately maintained, with sections of it listed and no longer used for burials.

There are mature trees en masse, the odd patch of perennials in summer and lovely memories of people who lived and died in Copenhagen hundreds of years ago. And there are young people sunbathing in the summer (and yes, there is the occasional topless woman among them), families going for picnics – as has been the tradition ever since this cemetery was located in the countryside beyond the old fortified city and people would go to visit their departed family members on a Sunday and make an outing of it – and runners going for a jog on the many criss-crossing paths.

The cemetery is a living place, an integral part of our neighbourhood and in no way a gloomy or sad place. And it’s a whopping great view to have; from the warm yellow wall surrounding it, scanning upwards across the headstones and tree trunks to the canopy of tree crowns that form our horizon.

On the other side – from the kitchen, bathroom and bedroom – our view is less stunning, but to me it is actually also quite charming. We can look down into the courtyard garden below, with barbecues, tables and chairs and even a swing hanging from the branch of a medlar tree. And we can look across to a roof-scape of chimneys that reach up to the heavens, with frequent visits from seagulls and crows. It might not be conventionally beautiful like the view over the cemetery, but it has an urban charm to it; a sense of Baudelairesque retreat to a place above the city.

It reminds me of Baudelaire’s poem Paysage, where during winter the narrator retreats to his Parisian garret to write his pastoral poetry and

De tirer un soleil de mon coeur, et de faire

De mes pensers brûlants une tiède atmosphère.

“To pull a sun from my heart and to make / from my burning thought a tepid atmosphere.”

Posted in flâneur | Tagged , , | 18 Comments »

Sunday Morning Visitors

January 23, 2012 by Flâneur Gardener

Not the greatest picture, I know, but it was the best I could do on Sunday morning when I suddenly saw two deer out in the garden.

I know they come to eat the bark of bushes and trees, and they’ve been quite rought with the little pear tree last winter and seem to continue this habit, but… I love them!

They stopped by briefly on Saturday afternoon and then again for a bit longer on Sunday morning, and it seems that they are particularly fond of the top of the fir tree that toppled over recently.

I know some gardeners go to great lengths to keep deer out of their gardens, but I welcome them; there’s something very pleasant about wildlife in the garden, and at least in Denmark it doesn’t get much bigger than deer. I get all excited when I spot them around the garden, and especially these youngsters with their thick winter fur and their furry new antlers.

On Thursday my husband will be going up to the summerhouse with his mother, and then I will replace her Friday after work. I do hope he gets to see our visitors…

Posted in Wildlife, winter | Tagged , | 14 Comments »

Impatiently Waiting

January 20, 2012 by Flâneur Gardener

Saturday morning I’ll head up to the summer house. The weather forecast is dismal, so I probably won’t spend much time gardening, but I can tidy up the house and put clean sheets on the bed so it’s ready for the following weekend when I will be up there with my husband.

I’ve updated my blog layout with a spring header. Not to say that winter is over, because it seems it hasn’t actually arrived yet, with December and January so far having been mild and wet, but because the lack of proper winter means that by now I just want spring to get here.

I know it’s still just mid-January, but the aconites are blooming in the gardens of the Royal Library here in Copenhagen, and surely that’s cause for some spring celebration, even if it’s a bit early.

Posted in spring | 12 Comments »

New Year’s Resolutions?

January 16, 2012 by Flâneur Gardener

Right, so 2011 was a busy year, getting the new apartment sorted and managing some personal stress due to my dad’s ongoing illness, but 2012 will be different. Right?

I want to get the garden back into focus; it’s been rather blurred over the past year, with the vegetable garden as the only project that was really seen through. This means I will try not to make new projects, and thus my gardening resolution for 2012 will be:

Weeding, cutting, mowing, pruning

As you all know, general maintenance should be more than enough to keep me busy, so it’s not like it will be a lazy gardening year; just a year with less guilty conscience about the stuff that didn’t get done or didn’t get done at the right time.

(Though I might scatter some annual seeds here and here to add some extra bloom to the garden, and of course I will sow something in the vegetable garden as well.)

Posted in blogging, garden, spring | 4 Comments »

What grows up must come down…

January 13, 2012 by Flâneur Gardener

It seems that one of the winter storms has had a casualty in our garden! On of the fir trees by the drive has fallen, but it was not very pretty and it fell on the area un-affectionately known as “the cemetery”, so that’s all right.

The picture adequately describes what a small root system it had, and considering it was a 30ft tree I guess it’s not surprising that it toppled over.

It does mean, though, that our garden is more open to the road, so I will have to think of ways to mitigate this accident and make the most of it. I’m pretty sure we already have small-ish plants in that area that will be able to bush out and give coverage within a few years, so I’m not too worried.

 

On the plus-side this will give us some fire wood to keep us warm! (Though probably not this winter, since it needs to season.) So tomorrow I will play the chain-saw gardener and have some fun with that.

Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments »

Merry Christmas

December 26, 2011 by Flâneur Gardener

So I’ve had a bit of a busy autumn with little time for the garden and even less time for blogging about it, so here’s just a quick seasonal greeting to let you know I’m still around and will resume blogging when the gardening season kicks off again in a few months…

This is what our apartment looked like at noon on the 24th, just hours before our family arrived to celebrate Christmas with us with tree, roast goose, presents et cetera. It was a perfect Christmas, and I hope you all had an equally lovely time.

Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments »

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