Pig Sty Avenue

The parsley showed up a few days ago,  but no sign whatsoever of the sage, rosemary, lovage or lavender.  Basil's very slow. The mint is 90% dead, and four or five of the borage have germinated.  The thyme, I'll prick out next weekend.  This weekend I did the geraniums, I've got seven altogether.  I bought at bag of garden soil from Mr Mint .  35 kuai, (which seemed a bit steep); about half a hundredweight, more than enough to be getting on with.  Mr M suggested a packet of bonemeal, 5 kuai, so I got some.  I think he's got perlite there, too, but that's for another day - I was heavy laden with the bag of earth.  The paper cups I was using for seedlings are no good - they get waterlogged and slimey round the bottom.  Now I've got translucent plastic cups, half filled with soil, holes with a kitchen knife in the lower rim, the bit nearest the water.  My theory is with them, the plastic will let in the light and keep off some, but n...

The thyme's sprouting like crazy.  The basil, just started showing today.  I've pricked out three geraniums.  Also today, two improvised half-trays: I cut in half, lengthways,  the box a small cafetiere came in, sellotaped the two halves where the folded ends of the original design were rebelling, and then sellotaped in and around small carrier bags to make them waterproof.  Voila.  Both filled with compost from the flower market.  One wee tray of lavender, one of lovage.  The lavender is var. "Munster", and the packet says to plant it indoors, but everything's on the balcony, this weather.  Which, incidentally, is variable - from a hot English Summer day to a cold English Spring day.  Nights, I don't think we'll get a late frost.

The Great Firewall is fettlesome this morning, somehow managing to block Blogger, even through the tunnel. Flickr's always fine, though. Yesterday I took the bike to the wee place on the corner that mends bikes, got the saddle lowered, the brakes adjusted and the chain oiled. I was after the bicycle equivalent of a 10,000 mile service, and had the Chinese for that written down, but the man in the bike place said it didn't need it. He asked how long I'd had it, but remained impassive when I said a month. I asked if he thought it was a good bike, and he shook his head and laughed and said, No, it was Chinese. He said I should get a Japanese bike if I wanted a good one. I think this was probably a sincere opinion, as the place didn't sell bikes, so he had no ulterior motive. And, as fond of the bike as I am, he has a point: it's a bit cumbersome if, for example, you're trying to negotiate a narrow way with a basket full of shopping, up a slope, with a sh...

This morning I've sowed in pots sage, thyme, coriander and geraniums. The last is on the windowsill indoors for now, the weather being uncertain - it was like an English June day, yesterday, but today is much cooler and it's a bit misty. I've also sowed borage in the big pot with the mint , which is looking somewhat straggly, on the basis that they should both be big and ugly enough to look after themselves in the same pot. And if it thrives, the borage should seed itself in the pot. The geraniums are described only as "Fantasy Mixed", and there's something about "flowers one year only", so I suppose they're not hardy geraniums but actually pelargoniums . Which link goes to a website which looks undermaintained but the main page is worth clicking on for the quote from Margery Fish if nothing else. Thanks Marge, I'm taking your advice. I suppose if I kept the plants overwinter on the balcony, and took cuttings from them in the early...

To cheer myself up after a morning sabotaged by some network related not-working-properly IT issues, I went for a walk down Fuzhou Lu to the foreign language bookshop.  I've got Our Mutual Friend by the armchair at home, but he's a bit bulky if you pop out for lunch with a beer and a read.  So I looked at Slaughterhouse-Five , which I've been meaning to read for a while, and then I saw Empire of the Sun , and well, what other novel was I going to buy in Shanghai this afternoon? I read it years ago and had no inkling of the place in time and space that Ballard was describing.  Now the references are jumping out at me to find, and that's after only the first two chapters.    Amherst Rd is here . There's a lot more craic here .

I noticed this morning that hedges are sprouting new growth.  It's that time of year. So I've started on the balcony.  A pot of rocket, (which I've never grown before), about 20 seeds in a four inch pot of flower market compost.  To crop from the pot.  And about the same number of seeds of rosemary in the same conditions.  The rosemary, I seem to remember last time I grew it, it was slow to germinate.  It's to be pricked out into pots, (I noticed a flower shop on Beijing Lu was selling them today).  The rocket, I have no clue. Also, three big fat fruit seeds, from some fruit that was put in my hotel room in Bangkok, just to see what happens.  They're not mangoes, because I read somewhere online that mango seeds have multiple seeds inside them.  I opened one seed, and there was a fairly hard case, dark brown, reminiscent of a cockroach's shell in colour and texture.  It held a single seed nucleus.  I discarded that one, and sowed t...