All Hallows' Eve

Here in Sweden we celebrate All Hallows' Eve (Allhelgonaafton). This is a much more serene and solemn holiday than Halloween where we light candles on our loves one's grave to honor and remember them.

These days I'm living too far away from my graves to visit them so I've lit a "grave candle" on my balcony instead.













This is for all my lost loved ones but especially for my grandmother and my three cats Ronja, Viran and especially Bissen that I lost this year. I love you all!!! Jag älskar er!

Grape Hyacinths and Heather

Remember the sun I talked about in my last entry? It disappeared behind the trees after 5-10 minutes. As I said, we don't get much daylight in Sweden at this time of the year (and it will get worse in November and December)

Anyway, a couple of days after I'd planted the bulbs I got some Grape Hyacinth/Pärlhyacint bulbs as well. I would love to get some Snowdrops/Snödroppar as well since they're the first spring flowers to come (literary when there's still snow left) but they seem to be sold out.

Guess what I found after lifting away the moss from my bulbs?





The crocuses had already started to grow!!!!!


Now the crocuses are well hidden under more earth and moss along with loads of Grape Hyacinth bulbs though.






Grape Hyacinths/Pärlhyacinter
(The Swedish names means Pearl Hyacinth BTW)





I will come up with a way to insulate the pot a bit as well later. The gray insulation foam sheet in the background is for the plant box though.

I've also added some more heather to the flower boxes and put together some pots for the corner. I'm really happy with how the balcony looks now.



The corner


Spruce and two kinds of heather















Everything is still alive in the plant box so far...


The poor itty, bitty kitty monster missed her mommy!
(She's standing on the indoors window sill looking out)

I long for spring!

This is pretty much as much daylight as we get at this time of year. Is there any wonder why I long for spring????













But even it the darkest, dullest autumn you can still plan ahead for the spring and that's what I did when I finally planted my pot of spring bulbs last week.



First I started with six Narcissus bulbs (I know three
will be white but the other three will be a surprise)



Mommy's little helper, a.k.a. the itty bitty tiny kitty monster




After the narcissuses I added some more earth and then some tulip bulbs



This is how they will look (a little less overexposed IRL hopefully LOL)



I'd bought a paper screw full of crocus bulbs (surprise colors this time too)



They followed next after a new layer of earth.



Unfortunately I didn't have enough earth to cover
them up properly so I used some moss instead.


I've gotten some more bulbs and some more earth since (as well as more heather) but I'm saving that for another post, the sun is actually shining though the clouds right now *faint* so I want to enjoy it before it sets behind the trees.

Radish seeds!

I just wanted to show you the result of the strange radish fruits I got this year, seeds for next spring!!! (Hopefully I will actually get some radishes then as well. LOL)



The dried fruits



The seeds (with some dry husk flakes still left in *ooops*)



This show a little but better how much I got, it's more than it looks though.

Heather!

Yay! Finally the balcony looks pretty again! Less lush and jungle like than during the summer but beautiful with a fall theme. I've cleaned everything away (with a little help from my mom since my pain's been worse lately) and filled up with Heather, moss, pine and spruce.

I'm not quite done yet though. I'm waiting for some more Heather, spruce and pine and I will rearrange some things, decorate a bit more and maybe or maybe not sew a new "curtain" since the old one is pretty bleached and not very fall/winter themed. But I'm really happy with the changes and finally I don't have to feel embarrassed when new people visit the blog and all the see is this withered, sad photos. LOL (Even more imortant, I have a beautiful bacony for myself to look at as well)



Heather/Ljung, Pine/Tall and Spruce/Gran



The plant boxes are also filled with moss instead of soil.
I looooove the smell of moss!



I started off with two Heather plants in each plant box.



I've made an arrangement with a baby pine, moss,
lingonberry twigs, stones and some heather twigs.



Overview of the table area



Pretty fall colors!



The next day I found more exotic Heather in blue...



... and purple.



A new overview, the next day


I plan to move one of the more exotic looking Heathers to one of the big flower pots along with some more pine and spruce and I might also hang some Heather one the wall.

I've also bought different kind of spring onions and bulbs that I plan to plant in the other big pot to see if I can get them to grow in the spring. I forgot to take photos of though those but I will when I plant them.

And finally I've opened up the Runner Bean pods to reveal the actual beans that I will dry and use next season. Not ALL of them though, it too only 12 plants to create the jungle I had this summer.



Beans! Plenty of beans!


As you can see white Runner Beans only get plain white beans but I also had some flower revert/mutate back to the more common orange color and they ended up with traditional, beautiful beans in black and pink. In Swedish Runner Beans are called Rose Beans because if the beautiful colored beans. It's too bad I prefer the flowers of the white plants and the beans of the orange. LOL But they taste the same so I will stick to white plants.

Wild boar wreckings!

I got a photo from my brother this morning, it's from his neighbor's garden. Yesterday this used to be a nice lawn but last night it got visited (and very much destroyed) by wild boars.





My brothers and his wife already have a net/fence around their garden (that's what makes the photo look checkered) to protect it from deer so luckily they didn't get any four legged vandals on their lawn.

The good thing with being a balcony gardener is that I don't get unwelcome visits from wild boars (or deer or killer slugs). But since my balcony is completely barren right now a couple of wild boars might actually make it a bit more interesting. LOL

Bye bye beans!

Night frost and fall storms, the runner beans and the tomatoes started to look more dead than alive so I know it HAD to be done. But oh how bare and empty the balcony looks now when all the plants are gone! *sigh*



Empty!!!!



No more Runner Beans



The last photo of the tomatoes



The now barren corner



Harvested radish fruits (I will take care of the seeds later)



The remaining plants have move in to the plant box, strawberries,
wild strawberries, parsley and chives



The view



The view with colorful trees

I wanted to take a better, sunny photo of the trees yesterday but the heavy wind the night before had knocked those leaves to the ground.