Monday, June 18, 2012

Balcony Improvements 2012 Edition

This past weekend I must have been channeling my Dad on Father's Day because I finally got around to cleaning up my Garden/Balcony.  My Dad is a rabid avid gardener, and it was beyond time to do something about the garden of my own.

My balcony was a prime-time hang-out last summer.  I had updated my balcony ikea chairs, and had tried (and failed) to grow a veggie container garden.  However, since it has been more than a year, my balcony was showing some signs of neglect, observe the terrifying before photos:


Every time I went out there I had the sinking feeling that I was intruding on Spider Territory (Capitalized, that's how serious it was...).  When I wasn't on-guard against Shelob, I was disheartened to see the corpses of my dead veggies still in their pots.  Time for a fresh start to welcome in the spring midsummer.  


My first job was to re-pot my new plants.  I got two new (shade-loving) plants for my birthday from my dear fiance.  And this weekend I pickup up four little herb plants with my birthday money from my grandparents (thank you!).  All my plants were still in their garden-store mini-pots and were yearning for an upgrade.  I choose pots I already owned that looked like they would be a good size for each of them.  


(Clockwise from top left: Cilantro,  Sweet Basil, 
Italian Parsley, and Rosemary)

Then I re-potted.  For those of you who have never re-potted a plant, it is about as easy as it sounds.  After re-potting two of the plants I remembered that you are supposed to 'loosen the root ball' before you set it down in the new pot.  I adjusted and continued on.  


(You can spot some plant corpses on the left)

I then removed the dirt from all my old plants, consolidated the unused dirt into a single pot and stacked up my unused pots, and generally tidied up the rest of the plant shelf.  

Then I went to town sweeping.  I normally can't get too excited about something as futile as sweeping outside, but I have to admit it made a huge improvement.  



Now that the dust, dead plants and the most terrifying of the spider webs are gone I can sit back and enjoy my own little slice of outdoor LA.  



1 comment:

leilagaye said...

it looks quite lovely, there is nothing better (in my little mind) that a spot of outdoor living to enjoy!