The garden starts to awaken

Leer en español. 

In the winter months, I generally have trouble finding topics to write about, particularly if it is not nice outside. Hence the hiatus of this blog since late November. Even though I know that Nature is still alive, it's difficult to find inspiration with only darkness and rain outside, as it was for many weeks. Later came a few days of ice, snow and sub-zero temperatures, which —although nicer— still didn't manage to inspire me. It took the first weekend of semi-spring weather to get the garden (and me) out of its (our) lethargy. For the last few days, and at least for one more week, temperatures rose and the sun came out. The layer of ice and snow disappeared from the garden, and the first new shoots are beginning to emerge, together with the first insects. 

One must take advantage of the possibility of being outside for a while without freezing to start with some overdue work in the garden. So I spent part of my Saturday cutting and picking up dead twigs and leaves, preparing the composter, and trimming the rose bush, so that the new shoots will not grow so high that the roses end up falling on our neighbors' roof (as it happened last year). My husband also gave the hedge a good trim. I was today years old when I learned that the nature protection law in Germany dictates that this must be done now: after March 1 (and until September 30) it is verboten to cut (at least too radically) hedges, bushes, and trees, to protect the species that might nest there. 

And speaking of nesting: this year our project is to try to convince the adorable European robin that often comes to the feeder to nest in our garden. For that, we put a new nesting box that is supposedly good for this type of bird in a sheltered place in the hedge. 

The robin nester.

Not all my work was directly in the garden. A few days ago I bought some rustic wooden containers (probably used for fruits and vegetables in the past) to use them as flower boxes. I had bought some back in 2015, but the weather has damaged them so much that they are practically destroyed. So three new boxes will replace them. This time we took a while to clean them and cover them with protective varnish, so they might last a bit longer. 

My new plant boxes.

Even though it is still early to plant (most probably we'll still have many days with low temperatures, snow and ice), the time approaches to start plants inside. I normally do this in the first or second week of March, but in the meantime I've started with a little experiment: in our supermarket they now sell the most delicious, sweet, cherry tomatoes, so I got some seeds and planted them. The little plants just germinated yesterday. We'll see if I'm successful and if the tomatoes end up tasting as good. 

Seedlings from the most delicious cherry tomatoes I've had.