balcony gardening (i)

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For the first time in my life, I live in a home where I alone am responsible. To be honest, I think it has gone to my head. All the possibilities for making stuff!

Included in this home is a balcony. In March, I started planting seeds. And I got so excited, I might have gone a bit overboard with the planting. Because, seedlings grow into plants. And suddenly, you can’t fit into your own balcony. But then, in mid-spring, I started getting visits from a blue tit. At first, I saw it from my kitchen window while drinking my morning tea. It landed on the espalier I had built from scrap pieces of wood, its blue feathers contrasting so beautifully with the rust-red paint. And I thought: How lovely! Small birds can also enjoy my balcony. But then I saw what it was there to do. It jumped from the espalier to my tomato plants, and started peeling off the skin of the stems. Long segments of fibre, peeled right off. And from the tomato plants, it flew on to the sage, starting to bite off pieces of the stems of the leaves. Not the leaves themselves! The stems, effectively leaving the leaves to slowly shrivel up from reduced water circulation. I had to go out on the balcony to scare it away.

But the next morning, it was there again, peeling off skin from my balcony plants. The marauding blue tit. Probably collecting fibers for its nest. It became a morning ritual, standing in the kitchen window, looking for the bird to appear – trying to prevent it from piece by piece peeling away at my home-owner’s omnipotence. 

By early June, the marauding blue tit stopped coming by. I guess it was done building its nest. And my tomato plants survived. Their stems are a bit crooked and thicker in the places that were peeled, but they still started flowering and are now heavy with green baby tomatoes. So things worked out. And I have a new balcony frenemy.

Photo: My friend David (in a lovely jumper made by me) picking tiny berry tomatoes in Jardin botanique de la Charme in Clermont-Ferrand, France, October 2018. Posted on Instagram July 6, 2020.