Wild strawberries approaching!

Guess what? 

I'll be gorging on wild strawberries pretty soon!  I can't wait!

In case you don't remember (or have not been here before) - it's the same plant that travelled through half of Europe in an ordinary postal package, straight from my parents' garden to mine.  It looked rather sad right after the transit:

The brave strawberries regained life pretty soon, within a month or so being covered in fresh green leaves and sprouting first tentative flowers.

Now the plant has plenty of small, yellow-still fruits and I'm counting the days down to my first strawberries-and-cream of the summer.  Yeah! 

True, this will probably be very tiny dessert - I expect a spoonful or two after I've shared it with my other half - but IT WILL BE THERE.  And at present there is no chance whatsoever of buying wild strawberries on the Irish market.  It's simply not possible, at least as far as I know.

Well, I've had my share of gardening failures (sad story of a raspberry bush, anyone?), but wild strawberries are definitely a bright success. 

Another week or so... 

A bit of shameless self-promotion and chili plants

Traffic lull on my gardening lenses these days, and I need to give it a little boost. 

Sure thing, the blog gets most of my attention garden-wise, with lenses being rather general than specific, but still it may be entertaining reading.  There's one about reusing your rubbish as planting pots, one about talking to plants and another one discussing joys of growing a little garden on a window sill.  If you feel like reading greenish stories, do visit.

For dessert a quick picture of my budding chili plant - it actually has more flowers now, and looks even healthier and greenier.  I can't wait for when it fruits, but I don't want to jinx it - I may still find out that Ireland is not sunny enough for growing decent chili peppers. 

Well, today it certainly isn't sunny enough, and I'm suffering together with my chilis. 

Luckily, even the rain ends eventually :)

Does Night-scented Stock grow in your part of the world?

Night-scented Stock, also known as Evening Stock is actually Matthiola Longipetala.  I'm not sure as to the worldwide recognition of this humble flower, but if it doesn't have any, it surely deserves lots!

It looks modest enough (and I'm not going to treat you like an idiot by describing it, because you can SEE it above), but it has one amazing quality that not everyone may know about - smell. 

You can guess it by looking at its name - night-scented stock starts to grace the world with its smell only when it gets dark.  The scent is beatiful, sweet and oh so strong!  This tiny shrub on the picture, just a handful of flowers, one or two plants altogether, can make my head spin. 

I woud've never been reminded of how great this flower is if not my night trips to my balcony garden.  Imagine me, more or less in a nightdress, sneaking outside just to get a few twigs of parsley or whatever.  Then the scent attacks and I'm standing there, charmed off my feet, just smelling it and who cares that it's windy and raining.  THAT's how powerful the plant is. 

Another great thing, which may not be obvious and which I learn by my own experiment is that the night-scented stock doesn't need a big container to grow.  I have to admit - some of my plants do suffer because of living in half of a plastic bottle, they grow dwarf-size and generally don't behave (a subject for a whole separate post, really), but this small purple flower grows like insane and totally doesn't mind harsh conditions.  Conclusion - you can grow it anywhere at all. 

Second thing worth mentioning - it looks fragile, but it's actually very weather resistant.  I live right at the oceanside and my balcony is sometimes tormented by really strong winds - night-scented stock doesn't seem to mind at all. 

Blah, only the name is awful.  Night-scented stock, like if I was cooking or something.  Would someone please come up with a better name?

I have some seeds left, and I'm feeling generous today, so how about this -  if you send me a nice email to experimentalgardens(at)gmail.com and include your address, I will send you a handful of seeds.  One package only, I'm afraid, because I can't afford more postage (unless you charm me off my feet, haha) - if there's more emails I'll just pick my favourite, ok?