Spring gardening in isolation

This is something every bloggers didn’t expect writing… ever.

First gardening article post pandemic and obviously isolated at home, I’m looking forward on this upcoming gardening season with a bitter sweet taste. Now more than ever, I’m extremely happy and grateful to be able to garden. Playing in dirt and watching plants grow while collecting delicious produces to make recipes with will make this social distancing easier to cope with.

The sounds of the birds are getting louder and louder every day which announce the sweet beginning of Spring. Most often then not, the balcony door is wide open. Spring is a season I’m always looking forward to because it means that I’ll be gaining some extra square feet in my apartment, as half the jungle will most likely be moved outdoor. Moving everyone around will also mean extra square feet to start new seeds for the fall, winter and year round jungle. Overall it’s an exciting season for it’s new beginning. It gives us a false sense of new and often gives me a boost to start implementing new habits…. like blogging more XD

So, after over a month of quarantine, I don’t know about you but, anxiety is rising a bit. Luckily, not enough to render my will power to do things absolutely useless 100% of the time but high enough that some days I drink tea, watch the jungle growing and do something creative but nothing more. Talking about this feels like I’m complaining for still having a job but that’s not it. These times are weird for everyone and I often feel a weird feeling of obligation and failure realizing that I’m just aren’t as productive as I wished.

This is why making art has been a sanity saver and it’s making me jump from cooking to painting during the work week to balance the rush of emotions.

Lucky for this blog, it only means more content.

Now, since were here to talk about gardening…

As you can imagine, a few things have happened in the urban jungle since the last blog. First thing first, the tomatoes, peppers and eggplant are officially producing but I’m sadly trying to contain an infestation of spider mites. This could have been avoided by me being more proactive, in the last few weeks (gardening wise), by going to buy the product needed to get rid of the bug issue but, since the hardware store close to my place was close, all last month, it made resolving this issue a little bit harder. I ended up walking one hour there and back to another hardware store (even took public transport – worst idea of all time – anxiety inducing nightmare) which was a very stressful but also very needed and worth it.

So most of the plants aren’t too bad but the orange bell peppers and the oiseaux peppers are badly hit by those little devils. Despite this little annoyance, hopes are still up and the war isn’t over yet.

Then so much time went by and I almost killed the papyruses.

Even at this time, only one of them is properly potted (as you can see) and the other one is desperately waiting on my proactivity to kick in to varnish some of the painted terra cotta so he can have a home. No worries, I won’t let it die and will get on varnishing mode very shortly. The colour of the leaves changed a bit but new stems are also growing which is keeping me very positive for the future of these papyruses.

Lately, just before the crisis, I had also bought new plants from a super cool chick on kijiji. They are still very small and are taking their time to grow, which is perfectly fine for me, as I currently don’t have pots to put them in. One is the famous monstera andansonii and the other one…. I forgot the name! ugh… so help me if you know it. lol!

Here’s a few updated images of the jungle with official photos new additions.