i’ve been ignoring my balcony for a while.

initially, it was because the summer drought had started to abate, and so i didn’t have to spend half to three-quarters of an hour watering the plants. then it was because as autumn began, the only things i could pick were the cherry tomatoes that kept on giving all the way up to october. and then the rains came and i didn’t want to do anything in the cold and wet.

but today, bright and sunny morning that it was, i got out there for the first time in months and immediately remembered how much i like gardening and pottering about.

i got down to some serious tidying-up, cutting away the skeletons of the verbena and the mint, clearing away the remains of the borage and tomato plants, as well as the husks of the sweet peas, spaghetti squash and marigolds. i pruned the mini-rose topiary, the sage, the gardenia and begonias, and cut away the dead and dying leaves of the stock and the salad box.

i also hunted down as many slugs as i could, depositing them in a plastic bottle and leaving it out by the bins with the rest of my garden waste. slug eggs (at least i think they’re slug eggs) look like frog spawn, and are alarmingly identical-looking to sago - which of course means that i will never be able to enjoy honey-dew sago again.

while i’d fretted about the parsley dying in the summer, i found out today that the seeds it cast off prior to its death had germinated in and amongst its neighbouring pots, and the plants are now about 2-inches tall. so i gathered the stray plants from their various landing places and re-potted them together, crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. the anemones that i’d been dismissive of in the summer are thriving. this is, i think, in part due to them thinking it’s spring rather than the supposed dead of winter (hello, global warming!), and also because they’re lack of performance earlier this year has given the bulbs/corms tremendous stores of energy to throw out frond after frond of beautiful foliage and the occasional stunning flower.

the cyclamen i’d rescued from the garden when we moved out of elephant and castle is putting out cute fuschia flowers, and the jasmine has finally started to produce little flower buds that i hope will proceed to burst into white clouds of perfume. several of the seeds i’d planted really late in the season are still going strong, albeit rather slowly, but at least they’ll be well-established by the time the growing season begins in earnest and hopefully avoid being devoured by aphids and slugs. the daffodils are beginning to shove up from their hiding place in the planter box, and the hydrangea has started to produce leaf-buds after the rather severe pruning i gave it.

i also discovered that a potato i’d half-heartedly buried in some soil because it was no longer fit for eating. having sprouted leaves and whatnot, had actually gone and produced a bunch of tiny potatoes! while i knew the technicalities of how it reproduced, i’d never grown potatoes before, and to somehow manage to do it without even having to try very hard led first to astonishment, and then to a warm glow of awe at nature’s abilities to just get on with it.

by the end of it, my hands were scratched up and my nails were filthy, my thighs were burning from the squatting i’d been doing, and i’d broken a pair of scissors (must remember to buy secateurs). but i was feeling very relaxed and satisfied, and very at-one with the world - gardening is seriously therapeutic. now all i need is for the lavender to grow like crazy.