apartment – A True Love of Mine

DIY: Tea Caddy Potted Herbs

One of the things i’ve learnt as i’ve grown up is that you need to make your own happiness. My husband said this during his speech at our wedding and it is wise advice. So i’ve been trying to find things in my life that calm me and make me happy when things aren’t going so well. One of these things is my little balcony garden.

My mum was always an avid and talented gardener and we had the most luscious and colourful garden when I was a child. I never had much interest or success until we moved into this apartment and I thought I would have a crack at it. What was the worst that could happen?

Being an avid tea drinker I had a couple of cute, empty tea caddys lying around taking up space so I thought, why not use them as pots? I chose some herbs that wouldn’t take up much space and wouldn’t mind being a bit stunted (as the caddys have very narrow openings there isn’t much room for the plants to grow).

I decided on purple sage (hidden at the back of this picture) and lemon thyme for this potting experiment

bashed a few drainage holes in the bottom of the tins using a screwdriver and hammer (much to hubs’s chagrin…)

and potted the herbs with a bit of potting mix.

It’s far from a perfect situation for these little herbies to grow as its difficult to get enough potting mix in that tiny hole once the plants are in but they look so damn pretty I don’t even care!

And here they are, enjoying their new home on my balcony!

These little herbs have been so resilient and given me a decent crop for my cooking. I can’t say that they have flourished but they have certainly prevailed against caterpillars, scorching hot afternoon summer sun and some seriously neglectful watering. I would probably choose tins with a wider opening or cut the top out of them next time. Please, learn from my mistakes! In the end, this project certainly helped increase my happiness and I really love sitting on my balcony and seeing my little plants grow against the odds. What small things do you do to choose happiness?

Apartment Love: Atmospheric Candles

They say it takes at least six months to feel really at home in a new place. There is definitely an immediate adjusting period when you wake up and have idea where you are and no idea where anything is, but I think that hubs and I settled pretty quickly into our marital home. While there is a room (or two) still full of boxes left to unpack, we got the important rooms i.e. bedroom, kitchen and living room pretty much set up within a couple of months, despite having to buy or thrift pretty much all our furniture. One of the things that I think makes it difficult to settle into a new home is that ‘not-really-lived-in-yet’ atmosphere that comes with unfamiliarity. There might not be anything huge that you can do to counter this but I do have one little tip which is…

Scented Candles.

Bam.

Apartment Love: The Balcony Garden Part One

My mum is an avid gardener. I think that not only her thumbs, but all her fingers are green. I never thought i’d inherited that gene from her until hubs and I moved into our home and I saw the potential of our lovely large balcony. While it faces west which, in Australia is not ideal due to the super harsh afternoon sun, I felt compelled to fill this space with green. I vowed that this year, I was going to learn how to garden. So this will be a little series of posts that document my growing balcony garden with triumphs and the (hopefully not too many) failures.

Step 1 was to go to bunnings and buy a bunch of tiny terracotta pots to fill with seedlings of Violas, Lettuce and a large pot for a Mint bush. You might remember my utter joy at planting this mint from my post about mojitos from the end of summer. I also bought a big bag of potting mix, some cute pink gardening gloves and a cheap plastic trowel.