I have a very small front yard. That's it! Desire was great, power and understanding were small. My last house has a very small yard.
Twenty-something years ago, when I bought the house, both my wife and I were very busy with our jobs at a bank. I mean we would leave home in the morning and come back at night, we were more interested in the house and didn't think that there would come a time when we would have free time. That time came sooner than we imagined and that's when we found we had a yard. A yard too small to have a garden. Since then we have been trying to cram a lot of flowers, bushes, and trees into less than 100 square meters!
This is my first post in this community. I'm not really entitled to do so because I don't have a garden in the true sense of the word, I have a bit of land in front of my house that I call sometimes yard, sometimes garden. Yard because it is a piece of land that separates the house from the street, garden because I plant flowers all the time and take care of them (as far as I can).
I'm writing here in this community and about the garden to answer a question @traisto asked me in his superb post, Garden Journal - with sea view and mountain view.
The question was this: I wonder if the winter has come in the garden of @bluemoon and how the passionflower is doing :)
I have a passion for passionflowers!
It all started in Bulgaria, in the south, in Sozopol. There, in the south, on the Black Sea, the climate is much warmer than in Romania, where I live, further north.
During my holiday in Sozopol, I saw for the first time passionflowers growing outside, climbing on fences. I was so impressed that I stayed for a long time in front of a house that had the plant on the fence, but there was only one flower on the plant's stems. After a while a lady who lived there came out, not too young and with whom we didn't manage to converse, we didn't know Bulgarian and she didn't know a bit of English which we thought we knew. That didn't stop her from understanding our passion and she picked the only flower she offered us. We are very impressed and look, we don't forget this over ten-year-old event.
In recent years I have tried to plant this flower in my garden. This is because in recent years I have found it in pots in florists. I had it in the house, in pots, but then I tried to take it to the next level and started planting in my small yard/garden the flowers from pots. Two years ago, unsuccessfully, the flowers lived a few weeks and then died. Last summer I had better luck and out of five plants, one grew well and bloomed.
The first photo shows it.
The pleasant surprise was that the plant did not wilt or dry out. When I bought it from the florist I was told it was an annual flower but I had seen plants in Bulgaria so large that they were definitely several years old.
Because of this, I protected the plant with special foil and now I am looking forward to spring to see if it survived and if it will live on. This is the answer to the second question.
For the first question, the answer is very simple. This year winter did not come to Bucharest! It hasn't snowed yet, but that doesn't mean we have escaped. I think there is still this risk for another thirty days. However, this is the first time, in my life, that it hasn't snowed and snow hasn't fallen until almost the middle of February.
The southern part of Romania has more and more Mediterranean influences and global warming and what is happening now proves that. I like the Mediterranean climate. I like Mediterranean plants. That's why I try to have as many of these as possible. In pots, and in winter I bring them into the house. This move has not been good for the plants, which have not adjusted to the change.
Last year I decided to plant these plants in the yard and protect them with foil, to try to acclimatize them.
As I said, I think in a month I'll be able to unpack these "packages" and see if I made a good choice.
Some of my Mediterranean plants have stayed in the house. They have given me great joy to bloom. Below I will show you my interior garden.
Bougainvillea
Jasmine
Hibiscus flower
The olive tree
Some of the plants I took to an attic, with a lower temperature. I understand that the temperature should not be higher than 10 degrees Celsius.
There were a few plants from my garden in the room. My greatest wish is that starting this year I can put these plants in my yard/garden and there they will stay.
I hope I have answered the questions satisfactorily, I hope @traisto is satisfied. Now I have a question!
My friend @traisto knows about my love for Greece, for the islands and for everything I can find there when I manage to go on holiday. I like, like all tourists, I think, to take small souvenirs, small objects that remind me of the pleasant moments spent there. Shells, stones and... plants. I collected from Thassos, during my walks, different aromatic plants and not only. I planted them in my yard but most of them didn't survive the winter. I was left with just this one little plant that lasted, for a couple of years it stagnated, didn't want to grow and now I was pleasantly surprised to see it starting to show signs of life.
I don't know the name of this plant. If the picture is clear enough, please ask @traisto if she recognizes the plant, which I think is a bush.
These exotic and unusual flowers, for now, in Romania must be bought from florists. There is a flower market. Thus, this post is also made for #MarketFriday, @dswigle's challenge. The general rule in this challenge is to be #alwaysaflower, usually at the end.
Another surprise I had at the end of the year. The tiny, fragile lobelia that usually dies back in late November refused to do so. I put it in a little pot and hope it will live until spring, to see if I can turn an annual into a perennial!
