I almost got to see the sun today, look how close it was :-)

When reading in the blog 'Keep the coffee comming' about her outdoor shower a memory comes back to me. It is from the time I lived in a cottage without hot water. Well I lived without most things there and loved it. But during summers I used to lay the gardenhoose, filled with water, in the sun so that the water inside would heat up.

Pelargonium inquinans. One of the mothers to our common geraniums in all colors. Grows wild in South Africa, but nowdays I think it also grows wild in California.

When it had been in the sun for a couple of hours I hung up two sheets towards my neighbour so they didn´t have to se me shower and then bring out soap and shampoo. I had to be rather quick though, because the new water that came in the the hose wasn´t especially warm :-) After I was finished I just let the sun dry me up.

My hibiscuses have been slow to start flowering this year, this is the first one to open up here.


My first pepper for the year. I´ve had this plant for almost two years now, but never tested it in my cooking. I also almost watered it to death this early summer :-)

This was perfect during summers. Just the fact that I didn´t have to heat up the water on the stove and wipe the kitchen floor afterwards made it even more perfect. One day when I stood there and turned around watching the field just beside my cottage a tractor came around the corner in high speed. You should have seen the face on the man driving it :-) :-) He never looked me into my eyes after that :-)

Monkshood 'Bicolor'.

Later on, when I had my gardencenter, I had some old ladies that often came and bought flowers from me. We started to talk about where I had lived throughout my life. I then told them that I had lived nearby in a small cottage without hot water or anything. Then one of the ladies suddenly said, with a smile: So it was You we always saw naked in that garden! :-)

What I didn´t know was that there were an old growel road just on the other side of this small field beside my cottage(perhaps 50m wide, 164 feet), I couldn´t see it from my home because there grew a lot of bushes hiding it. I can only hope they enjoyed it :-)

Have a great day now!

Impatiens glandulifera, Himalayan balsam. This is a gardenrunner in all our country I belive. It grows so dence that even nettles dies. But since it´s an annual it´s easy to get rid of if one wants.