cat balcony

In the spring, I promised to show pictures of our balcony after the work on the house was finished. So, to start with where I left, this was the sad state of the balcony in May:

…and then in August:

Since I moved in, the challenge of this balcony has been to create a place where I could enjoy a little bit of gardening and where my cats could enjoy a little bit of outdoors. In such limited space these two activities sometimes exclude one another, and so far we have come to this compromise.

For the cats’ safety, the balcony had to be secured with a net. It is unfortunate that I cannot easily get to the plants in boxes outside the net to tend to them better, to pick faded blossoms and prune them but this is one of the compromises that just had to be made.

I didn’t want to feel like a prisoner behind bars and this solution with an olive green net protecting the upper part of the balcony works quite nicely. As there are green trees in the view, visitors sometimes never even notice what they’re looking through. There is a “cat window” in the lower part of the balcony, and that is secured with a solid wire.

Recently I have come across the term “catio” and have admired the many ways people try to make sure their cats have as much fun as possible under given circumstances. Of course, the best thing for a cat would be to run free in a garden. The best thing for a gardener would be to have a garden. We urban dwellers have to make do with what life offers us. Actually, that’s one of the best things I have learned from cats: they always seem to be quite happy with just what they have at hand, as if knowing too well that it could always be worse.

This is my youngest cat Josefínka, she came to us from a cat shelter already grown-up, supposedly very timid; she had sufferred unknown eye injury as a little kitten. She would make a good Halloween cat, only we don’t have Halloween. She has some issues related to the injury, and is being treated by homeopathy which seems to be working well.

Tadeášek is the embodiment of love. I got him from a shelter as a little kitten; he started to follow me everywhere and has never stopped since. He is the most vocal of them; quite unusually for a cat he can sing, ring, croak and bark, too.

Štěpánka is my first, and she is the smartest. Mind you, she can catch a bird through the net. She likes her personal space and is the only one that doesn’t sleep in bed but whenever I am down feeling sick, she comes to lie in my feet and heals me in her own feline way. A friend of mine found her in the street as a kitten. I never had a cat before; I actually wasn't sure that I liked cats.

Now on to the plants: The balcony has much shade, and so my favorites include hosta, ferns, coleus, heuchera and astilbe for the pots, and fuchsias and begonias for the boxes. The fuchsias and begonias overwinter inside the building in the hallway which has the right temperature but not enough light. This year they had to stay there much longer than usual because of the work being done on the balcony, and they never fully recovered from the abuse.

The space is limited but we all try to enjoy all that it has to offer, constantly rearranging the pots, plants and pebbles to suit our taste, some of us intentionally, others while chasing each other, but always delighted with the results.

running with the wolves

A visit to Silky Soul’s homeland among the hills and deep forests of the Carpathian Mountains in the easternmost corner of Slovakia near borders with Ukraine and Poland, where you can still run into wolves, European bison, or a bear…

This bear representing the Carpathian Mountains is one of the symbols of the local ethnic minority called the Rusyns or Rusnaks or Carpatho-Russians or Ruthenians. One of the most well-known Rusyns was Andy Warhol whose mother came from near the town of Medzilaborce in this area, now the seat of the Andy Warhol Museum with the second largest collection of his works.

Rusyns are of Greek Catholic or Russian Orthodox confession and built purely wooden churches in the past without metal nails because they refused to use the same tool that nailed Christ to the cross. Some of these churches have been preserved and now are inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list.

As always, I was on the lookout for cats and small gardens:

Feeling healed by beauty, on our way back we carried along with luggage also this picture by a Ukrainian artist that now hangs in Silky Soul’s consulting room, hopefully contributing to the therapeutic processes taking place there…

Yuri Behas, Thirteen Poplars

plant a tree

Plant a tree. You found several here when you landed on this old earth and you've seen many cut down during your time. You probably cut down a few yourself. The children who are born after you've passed have a right to find a few trees standing. But they will not if every person who passes through this vale of tears cuts down a few and forgets to plant any. Plant a tree. Plant a dozen of them, and then you will have done something for the generations who follow you, even as someone did something for you ages ago.
FORT LAUDERDALE HERALD

The simple act of planting a tree

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.