The forest and the ladybug apocalypse.

It's been a wonderfully outdoorsy weekend!  Lots of walks and really feeling the autumn right now.  Not much has happened with my plants at the moment.  The seasonals are on their way out and my chili pepper plants are just growing along fine.  In fact I have discovered a little pepper on one of my serrano chili plants!  Photos to come soon!  But right now I just want to share some pictures of my weekend.

-  On Saturday, we got on a bus out to East Berlin.  We went to Müggelheim which is where the Müggelsee is.  We walked in an impressive forest, which from the top looks out over one of the lakes.  The day started out really foggy.  It was crisp but not that cold.  The colour pallet of the day was mainly brown, yellow and grey.  It was beautiful.  I know I have been totally overusing the word autumnal, but it was super autumnal.  That's the only way I can describe it.  Here's the view on the way up through the forest.  There is a downhill mountain biking course through it!  There were some guys mountain biking down the course.  They were pretty fast and were jumping off ramps and stuff.  I was impressed.

Once we had made it to the top of the "hill", this was the stunning view we had over the smaller Müggelsee.  (It's called the smaller lake although it is mahoosive!)

-  Sunday, the weather was completely the opposite to the weather on Saturday.  I woke up to the sun shining and a cloudless blue sky!  We went to the Hasenheide, which is a park in Neukölln just across from Templehof.  Over the course of the day it got really warm and people were sitting in the park topless!  Really crazy when you think that it's already the end of October!  There was one thing that was really bizarre about today...there were soooooo many ladybugs flying around EVERYWHERE!  Every minute there was one landing on me after another one had just flown off.  I wonder if this is a common thing for October and that just like there is that one flying ant day, where ALL the flying ants EVER come out, that there is also a flying ladybug day.  I really enjoyed the ladybugs' company though and I managed to take this really cool photo of one about to take flight!

And here is a photo of two ladybugs flying in the blue sky!  It just looks like there are two black dots in the air, but they are ladybugs!  I promise!

-  After the Hasenheide I continued my journey home and popped by the Comenius Garden which was buzzing with people enjoying the sun.  The trees were just über-vibrant and full of colour!

Anyway, it was a perfect day for soaking up some autumn sun.  The paths were covered in crispy orange and yellow leaves and accompanied by the leaf crunching sound of my feet, it was just glorious.
Thanks for reading and I hope you all have had similar autumnal experiences!
..love..

Seasonal changes.

I'd like to welcome autumn to da house!!  The skies are blue, the sun is shining, and the wind is blowing!  With this change my bedroom gardening season is rearing to end for my summer plants.

- I still have some tomatoes that are staying strong with fruits ripening up.  Some of the tomato plants would look really really naked if it wasn't for a couple of wilting leaves and a few ripening tomatoes.  But that is all part of its course, plants grow, ripen and die to make space for next season's plants.  Here are some tomatoes I harvested a couple of days ago.  Kumato (top left), cherry (top and bottom right) and tiger stripe (bottom left).

- There are a couple of plants that are not rearing to an end.  Those are my serrano chili plants.  One is even starting to flower and everyone knows what that means!!!  Potential chili peppers!!!!

- Even my kohlrabi's are still holding on!  They didn't end up growing into actual kohlrabi's.  I think it's because I haven't put them in a pot big enough.  They are in a hanging basket and the stems are a beautiful foggy purple colour, and that's why I won't get rid of them...because they are pretty!

- Here is a distant view of my garden window.  You can see I have significantly less plants.  One of the reasons gardening is so wonderful is that you really can see and feel the seasons changing with your fingers if you don't otherwise. 

- For a finishing touch, here's a picture of me in my favourite place.  Of course you know it...Tempelhof!  A couple of weeks ago there were hay bails all over the field.  They had stacked some of them into pyramids, which we used as jumping platforms!!!  It was so much fun at the time...until I got home and my whole body was an itchy mess!!

Anyways, thanks for reading...and I wish you all the very best of the start of autumn.

Autumnal ..love..

Summer greens.

Hello everyone!  I finally have some time to write after a busy summer!  And my oh my have I got a lot of pictures to post.  I will put a caption above each photo saying when, where, and what!!

21.07.2014 - My grandmother's colourful bin.  Bits and pieces snipped off or fallen from plants on her balcony.  (Bavaria)

 23.07.2014 - My first yellow pear tomato of the season.  I don't think I will grow this sort anymore, as even last year the yield I got was very little.  They are however very pretty tomatoes when they do grow!

  27.07.2014 - New Serrano chili plants.  These were packed as if they were matches from a Mexican eatery called "Wahaca" in London.  This little packet was found and gifted to me.  How very cool to give your guests seeds instead of matches to remember your restaurant by.  I got really emotional when I was given them because I thought it was such a wonderful idea!

 27.07.2014 - After the third attempt my Jalapeno pepper plant is finally growing!

27.07.2014 - I bought a tiger stripe tomato plantling from the market, and it has grown really really tall and here are the first little tiger stripes making an appearance!

31.07.2014 - Harvested and ate my kumato tomato, that I grew from a tomato that I bought in the store.  I don't think it was ripe yet when I ate it.  The skin was still a little hard but I was just so impatient!

07.08.2014 - My other grandmother's garden (in Bavaria) in it's peak.  This is a view of her vegetable garden from her shed/summer house outside.  Although my grandmother doesn't like the second picture because it makes her garden look so empty, it shows more of the vegetable side of things that she grows.  (ginkgo, echinacea, rose, quince tree, chives, mangold/chard, plum tree, beans, zucchini, tomato, and many more that I have probably forgotten)

07.08.2014 - Look, some bees enjoying a zucchini flower!  (gran's garden)

07.08.2014 - This is the insane bursting with fruits wine/grape vine she has in the garden.  It is absolutely exploding with grapes which she will use to make jam.  Learned about Bachus the Greek wine god, that supposedly protects and encourages the grapes to grow.

12.08.2014 - Back in Berlin a sunset view over my beloved Tempelhofer Feld.

14.08.2014 - My tiger stripe tomato harvest.  Looking juicy on the vine and off.

16.08.2014 - Now comes our trip to Varazze in Liguria, Italy.  Such amazing plant life there.  So many succulents and cacti as well as citrus fruit trees.  Crazy.  It was a beautiful holiday in the warm warm sun.  There are so many rock dwelling plants it is unreal.

20.08.2014 - Gotta show you guys at least one picture of the sea!

Lemon and orange and lime trees were everywhere.  Although a lot of the lemons didn't seem to be ripe yet.  Apparently the weather hasn't been that great this summer, which could have something to do with it.

This tree is amazing, growing up the cracks of the rock, I have no idea how this happened.  It looks like a normal tree, but maybe it's actually a climber.  Who knows.  Maybe one of you knows?  If you know what kind of tree this is then let me know please!

Sighted on one of our evening strolls, the shop fronts in Liguria are just of many different types of succulents.  Beautiful.

21.08.2014 - As we were flying from our layover in Paris back to Berlin I got some great shots of the sun peaking through the clouds we were just flying through.  I love that space in between the clouds and the atmosphere.  It's magical.

So, after a really long picture post I say goodbye and goodnight.  I hope you have all had a brilliant summer wherever you were.  Thanks for reading, and I wish you all a great start into the week and into what feels like the start of late summer or the beginning of autumn.
..love..

Champion Tomatoes.

Hello!  After no post last week I gotta catch up with you all on my gardening happenings.

-  Firstly, this is what my indoor garden looks like at the moment!  Pretty full and green and wonderful!!  Looking very similar to last year's window view!

-  I harvested my first cherry tomatoes, and they were super duper tasty!  Woop woop!!  Here's some pictures of the ripening process.

-  I also went to visit a community garden called Prachttomate, here in Neukölln, which I hadn't been to before.  It is on Bornsdorfer Str. just off Karl-Marx-Straße.  It is by far the smallest community garden I have seen in Berlin.  Small doesn't mean anything, their tomato crops were bursting with colour all over.  Tomatoes growing EVERYWHERE!  Each vine looked so full and juicy it was incredible!

-  To finish off this post I will post up a picture of one of my favourite places, Tempelhof.  I sat on one of the "hunting perches".  Right by the field where the skylarks breed.  It was lovely.  Sounds of the birds, people jogging, people walking, people cycling.  And then the view of these clouds moving across the sky.  It was very refreshing.

I'd just also like to throw in "WOOOOOOOO DEUTSCHLAND IST WELTMEISTER!!!!"  There was lots of noise everywhere last night after a super tense football game.  It was a pretty hard fight but we did it!  I think we can all say that Argentina was pretty amazing and I definitely have a new found respect for their team.  Enough FIFA faffle.

Hope you all have a great start into your week and thanks for reading.

..love..

Cracking sunset and flowering corn.

Good evening folks!  The weeks keep zooming by.  I can feel the summer holidays approaching and the air is starting to buzz.  Hopefully the summer will fully hit us here in Berlin soon.  Everyone is waiting for it!  Despite the grey sky and the rain there have been some lovely clear skied adventures nonetheless!  You must forgive me if this post seems a little bit distracted, but I am writing whist simultaneously watching Germany play against Algeria in the World Cup.  I am not usually a big football watcher, but occasionally (especially during the World Cup, even though I know what a terrible company FIFA apparently is) I do enjoy it.  Let's begin with some of the happenings at the beginning of last week.

-  Last Monday evening we cycled to the Tempelhofer Feld.  My oh my it was a very beautiful evening with a wonderful sunset!

Cycling with our shadows!

 This is the community garden on the Tempelhofer Feld called Allmende Kontor.  That evening there were people sitting in all the nooks and crannies built in the garden.  Many times I was ogling a nice flower and then noticed a couple of faces sitting drinking beer just hidden behind.  It is a really great place to go for an evening beer and to watch the sunset.  Can you guys see the sunflowers in this photo or are the amazing rays of sunlight blinding you!?

-  I visited another community garden similar to the Prinzessinengarten on Moritzplatz.  This garden is called Himmelbeet and it is in Wedding right by the U-Bahn station Leopoldplatz.  It is a sweet little garden!  They even have beds that people can rent for a season.  As we were approaching the garden we heard faint sounds of a jazz band playing some tunes.  And we got closer to realise we had caught the end of the Himmelbeet Sommer Fest!  So we sat and enjoyed some nice music and then had a look around.  I was super impressed by all their kohl rabis and mangold!

-  Ok, so the last thing I want to show you guys is the flower that one of my corn plants has developed!  What does this mean?  Is this going to become a ear of corn!?  I am so excited!  People have told me it is not possible to grow corn successfully indoors without sufficient grow lights and whatnot.  I really hope that I can prove them wrong.  I am super excited, but also needing to contain my excitement in case it doesn't work out so that I'm not too disappointed.

I gotta dash guys and girls.  People are starting to throw firecrackers in the streets (football game related even though it's half time) and every time one goes BANG I jump out of my skin.  So I hope you all have a great week and thanks for reading.
..love..

Succulent update.

Here is a short succulent propagation update.  This weekend I decided to pot some of the succulents that have been growing from their leaves.  The leaves have been sitting on a soil bed for months.  Sometimes I mist them with water and sometimes I don't.  They don't need any particular care I find.  Not too much sun and not too little.  What they DO need however is a whole load of sweet sweet time!  :)

-  Here is the soil tray with lots of different succulent leaves on it.  I don't know what half of them are called.  I should probably look into it.

-  I know that the little succulent I planted in the right jar is called a money tree.  The one on the left is some kind of Echeveria but I'm not that sure.

 -  I love planting in jars.  Makes every plant look super cute and hip!  Like it could be some kind of cool accessory.  I mean plants are cool and hip anyway but in jars even more so.

That's all for this week.  Short and point-y!  Thanks for reading, and I hope you have a good week.

..love..