holiday in the Mediterranean

Island of Brač, Croatia. The sun, the sea, the pebbles…

I was prepared to find some pretty little gardens with lots of flowers. I was right.

What I wasn’t prepared to find were all the hungry cats and kittens.

I should have brought bags of cat food!

I know that it is questionable how much tourists actually "help" by feeding stray animals in countries without an established spay and neuter program.

But would you have the heart to walk away from these little ones without sharing your snack with them?

There was one lost soul in particular that touched my heart.

This thin little cat with some older mouth injury, obviously unable to hunt for anything, found us one night on a terrace, watching the starry sky. When I volunteered to do the hunting instead and went to steal some cheese from our roommate, I told her to wait a little and she understood and waited. She seemed too afraid of people to come closer, yet also aware that they were the only source of food for her.

On the last night of our stay we heard some funny noises outside our bedroom window. Silky Soul said it was the aliens coming to get us (we had just watched the movie The Fourth Kind), but it was this little girl who finally found us and lied down to rest on a table beneath the window. I was touched. The next day when we loaded the car, she hid underneath it. I gave her the last meal I could share with her. She sat down at the edge of the road and watched us get in the car. She looked sad and lonely. I cannot get her out of my mind. Her serious, big eyes. Her little mouth, half-open all the time. The ribs under her skin. The way she looked up to the sky at a bird she will never be able to catch.

gardenless gardening inspiration

Recently, when reading a post about how balcony gardening gets contagious on the balcony gardening blog the 6×8 garden, I remembered some photos that I took in the past during my travels that have inspired me with how much can be done with just a little.

Barcelona, Spain:

Krakow, Poland:

Madeira, Portugal:

Since I became part of the community of fellow gardenless gardening bloggers, I have found inspiration also with the urban organic gardener, especially his former fire escape garden, he offers good practical tips.

In his own words, Anything’s possible!

I have also enjoyed exploring ideas about roof top gardening or parking strip gardening, and I fell in love with the subversive concept of guerilla gardening. If you have 2 spare minutes, do not miss this touching video about a very special guerilla gardener.

A piece of good news at the end, renovation on our house is finished, the weather is warm and sunny and our balcony fully inhabited again. Sadly, now my old camera is on strike, so photos next time…

two days of (some) sun

We were lucky enough to get two relatively bright days last weekend. This spring is very cold with flooding rains in our part of the world, probably due to the effects of the Icelandic volcano. We loved it when the eruption gave us several days of clear blue skies unpolluted by airplanes. We hate it when it gives us weeks of cold, wet weather. So, with the little sunshine that we did get, all other plans were put aside and we set out on a trip to Arboretum Šmelcovna near the town of Boskovice, then continued to the town and visited the old Jewish cemetery.

Silky Soul says this picture reminds him of a zen garden.

I think a zen garden is a great place to rest.