Gee-raniums!

The last weeks have been extremely busy, what with DMIL´s birthday and the Great Spring Cleaning at her place, which this year meant also getting rid of some of her patio plants that had frozen to death in this winter´s late-coming deep frost period. As they had been living in their respective containers for several years, that meant having to disassemble them- and their roots-and getting our hands pricked in the process by the dried-out juniper plant- as usually, we´d been looking in vain for the gardening gloves we just knew DMIL had, only to find them when putting away the saw we had used on the plants... Anyway, in spite of all resistance, that juniper is now gone, as well as a bunch of overaged planting containers.
Speaking of those, this weekend, at our place, was Geranium Day. I´ve put the balcony boxes back up, and this year I planted them with red upright geraniums which hopefully will, if they get a bit bigger, provide excellent cover from the nosy neighbours on the opposite side of the back yard.  The herb garden I didn´t replace yet, as they had only a few scraggly-looking lavender bushes at the garden store. But even with the pots I´d put the herbs in still stacked underneath the balcony table, just having the boxes planted and the one surviving oleander bush from last year plus a new cherry laurel plant outside again, ready to bloom, feels good. Now if the weather were to get better again...
As for the plants I tried to get through the winter inside, only one lavender bush, one rosemary, and one of the oleander bushes have survived hibernation. The cherry laurel and the boxwood plant I should better have taken inside, as they, too, did succumb to the extreme cold in January and had to be discarded. Which, for future winters, means I have to take any plant inside which I want to keep for the next year, and it also means limiting myself to no more plants than what I can put into the staircase to hibernate- those potted herbs did not take too well to our cozy heated flat. 

On the weight loss front, being at DMIL´s for almost two weeks did, of course, play havoc on my efforts. As DMIL won´t eat many of the things I´d cook for ourselves, I had to stick to traditional German cooking, and because she is such a finicky eater I had to eat of what was served, too, so as to not have her stop eating just because I did. Which meant a gain of four pounds which hasn´t come off again yet. But at least I stayed below the limit of morbid obesity.

So, it´s back to business as usual again. I´ll see how long it takes to repair the damages...


Julia