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Gardening is one of my favourite hobbies.

And it is a hobby rather than anything I could remotely think of doing as a career.  After all, although I always enjoyed it I was never really good at getting the plants or shrubs to their perfect state.  In fact, they were often in a state after only weeks under my care.  Still, I never let that little thing stop me.

And here, in Milan, it’s no different.  Well, that’s not entirely true.  We don’t have a garden so, in fact, it’s not the same at all.

When we were last in the UK, we went to Woolworths for chocolate and DVDs.  And I saw seeds so, as they’re so cheap, I thought I’d buy some.  All were flowers, mostly that had scent – sweet peas, that sort of thing – since that’s what I like.

My simple-minded thinking was that I would give them a try because, at the very worst, they would sprout, hang around for a bit and then die, allowing our balcony to return to its ‘half-dead state’ once again.

So, a little while ago, I planted the seeds in the window boxes that we inherited, kept them on the floor of the balcony to give them a chance and watered them daily.  They favoured my watering charms and sprang forth just like, well, erm, plants.

My plan was that, on 1^st May I would put them in their proper place, overhanging the railings of the balcony, where they would trail and droop, giving us a screen from prying eyes, being pretty and allowing a stunning waft of scent through the back door directly to me when I’m sat at the computer.

I was a day late putting them ‘out’ since it also meant a good spring-clean of the balcony.  However, that’s done now.  I can now, I thought, sit back and look forward to the riot of colour and smell that will soon be a talking point of our balcony (and the lady with the terrace downstairs as when I water them they inevitably pour forth the excess water directly outside her windows).

So, yesterday afternoon, I spoke to Jean on the phone and decided that I should sit out there now that it was clean and lovely and had green things everywhere.

But I think my fears will be realised.  After being out there for all of 10 minutes, it was just too hot.  Of course, I can come back into the cool (soon to be relatively cool) of the flat.  Unfortunately, the plants cannot, being, as they are, highly immobile.  They will get direct sunlight for most of the day.  And it’s only May.  Come June and July it gets so hot out there that, even at about 10 p.m., when the sun has long gone, the walls of the balcony are almost too hot to touch.

Personally, I give them until the end of May before I start to see the first signs of them giving up the ghost.  On reflection, getting UK seeds was a bit of an error on my part

Perhaps I should just go and buy cactii or artificial plants or something.  I understand that, these days, fake plants can seem almost like the real thing.  A bit like the burgers and the like when compared to the fabulous photographs that you find in fast food outlets, I suppose.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 3rd, 2008 at 3:15 pm and is filed under Italy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.