This is not actually a post on fertility. No really. This really is a post about birds and bees (and gardening).
Yesterday I went to the garden centre again, for the second time in as many weeks. I have realised that I am incapable of just buying a couple of things that can be easily carried home on the tram, and so I have discovered the joy of renting a local green wheels car for a couple of hours to enable me to buy everything I want to in one go.
Previously I’d go by tram, get overexcited and forget I no longer have a car waiting outside, fill up my trolley with compost, plants etc, get outside and realise that trying to transport all my purchases home on the tram was simply not going to work. So I’d invariably call an Uber to take me home and then have them grumpily watch me try and squeeze said bags of compost, mulch and plants into their pristine car trying desperately not to get any earth inside so they didn’t give me a bad review.
Anyway, back to yesterday. I went to the garden centre again as I realised I didn’t get everything I needed a few weeks ago. I went to get some new pots and some compost.
I left with the pots and compost plus an apple tree, peach tree, cherry tree, raspberry and blackberry bush. I have a roof terrace. Still, it says they are good for balconys so I’m sure there won’t be any issues…?
You might be wondering why on earth I am banging on about plants all of a sudden having been reading all about my infertility journey before. Well, I find gardening, however and wherever you do it, incredibly cathartic. There is something wonderful about the passing of the seasons and trying to get things to grow that is incredibly rewarding. I am one of those people who ‘rescues’ plants that have been abandoned by the side of the road and two of my biggest (and healthiest) house plants are ones that people dumped and that I couldn’t bear to see being thrown out.
Anyway, back to what I was saying. For my birthday this year my husband bought us a bee-keeping day course. I have been lobbying to keep bees on the roof for a couple of years to no avail, but for some reason he decided to encourage me. Why bees? Bees are awesome. There is something really calming about watching them working hard across the flowers in your garden. I’ve always tried to plant to attract them to varying degrees of success.
So, as you can imagine, the bee-keeping course (which we did with these guys and which I highly recommend https://www.beesand.co/workshops-and-experience-days.html ) further ignited my desire to keep bees.
With this in mind I bought books about how to do it and started looking more critically at my roof terrace planting.
As an aside, if anyone has ever tried to garden 5 stories up in northern Europe it is not easy. Plants that would be fine in a normal garden cannot stand how open it is on a roof. They are blasted with wind and rain throughout the winter and shrivel in desert like conditions in full sun during the summer. Everything is in pots so its difficult to keep them from drying out etc etc. Over the past 6 years I’ve learnt that plants like lavender and strawberries are fairly easy to keep, but everything else is a bit hit and miss.
Back to the planting. So bearing the ‘roof-top death zone’ in mind, I started to look at what other bee friendly plants I could get on my roof. And how to extend the flowering season for them from early spring (when they first emerge from hibernation and there is little food around), through to the halcyon summer days when they are spoiled for choice.
I’ve spent most dry weekend days since up on the roof planting bee friendly bulbs, feeding and mulching my pots and hoping that whether I have my own hive or not, that there will be more on my roof to interest and attract bees (and other pollinators). Hence the apple tree – I already have one, but it doesn’t produce anything so am looking to encourage a bit of cross-pollination if I can.
And the birds? Well, I started putting out feeders last year (downstairs where the cat can’t get at them) and mainly saw some of the resident parakeets. They are messy little buggers and I wasn’t making friends with the downstairs neighbours as they dropped nuts and seeds whilst munching on them (whoops). So I also created a new ‘feeding station’ with feeders complete with trays underneath to try and catch the worst of the debris – its also making the fat local pigeons happy as they can access the trays whereas the feeders themselves are a bit too difficult for them.
I’ve also added a feeder for the smaller birds as the parakeets are noisy bullies (but very funny to watch), and yesterday I was really excited to see a visiting robin. Am expecting visits to increase as the weather gets colder and the remaining other sources of food dwindle.
Today I was meant to be finalising the last bit of the garden I haven’t tackled yet (and planting all those trees I mentioned), but alas it wasn’t to be, so thats a task for next weekend. I hope it stays dry!