Something made me smile today...even though it has been bright and sunny out, the chill winter winds are still coming from the East off the Russian Steppes, and I have been itching this last few weeks to get some of the summer flowers and veg seeds into their trays, and steal a march on the growing season. My large apartment is built at an odd angle to the nurturing sun, with the main windows and balcony facing nearly east and west, with only a section of the front porch and the rear balcony getting the warm south sun in the mid morning and the mid afternoon of the day.
With the balcony, still being subject to the winds, it meant that a small corner of the porch lobby was the only place free to place seeds (other years I have started later and placed them outside)....and I had plans, in my mind to contrive some sort of tall thin shelved structure that I could place in the porch and set some seeds going.
So there I am, out and about in the van in the Cotswold countryside this morning... and I pass a rural house gateway...and stood out by the trash bin....was an old 1940's ~ 50s hat/coat/umbrella stand!!!!!!! I turned the van round...and slowed passed it...and a big note on it said...'Free to Good Home....Please Take'
Wow...lol...I couldn't believe it!!..but it was in the van in a trice and now is stood in my dining room, awaiting lifting up into my studio to re-stain and varnish.
It is six foot tall...and the base is 16 inches square...ideal for that lobby corner. At first I thought I'd chop it into two items...one for the lobby, another for the balcony...but looking at it long and hard....I am now thinking keep it whole for a three stage plant feature.
On the base I could have a big square pot...and maybe grow a Climbing plant like a Honeysuckle or Clematis or Passion Flower up each stem..... (I have also thought...i might actually plant veg on it.....i.e.: Runner Beans or Haricot Vert, that go up the struts for this year as an edible experiment and they have nice red flowers.)
On the middle stage...grow seeds and later a nice pot of cascading blooms....and on the top.....fill in the gap inside at the *summit* and hang a basket of flowers down inside.....
Indeed the ideas are reforming as I stand and mull over my good fortune and new possibilities of actually making another one myself.
So lets raise a beer to that age old universal truth, that if you are lost for ideas...if you start looking, something always turns up.
Sir D (today a Sage tomorrow Onions) of O
