For weeks, I’ve been reacting to things going wrong. Finally, I am back to acting, choosing, planning. When we found out we’d have to move by the end of the year, things got chaotic quickly. Add two ER visits, and I’ve had quite the end of the year.

By the end of November, we were packing boxes. Then, we didn’t know when or where we’d move. We weren’t packing for a move yet, we were rescuing our things from the damp and mold. Anything we didn’t want to lose, anything we didn’t need at that time went into boxes and into a dry basement.

Two weeks later, I’d view an apartment in a city I’d never been before. Four weeks later, we’d be moving there.

Nights were late and days were dark. Literally. Germany was dark enough that people used it to create panic about solar. I barely filmed. The light was just too horrible, the apartment too disgusting with all the mold. Seriously, this kind of footage was what you would have gotten if I’d filmed… I’ll spare you that.

Instead, let’s return to the garden where a mouse or vole got a feast of forgotten sunflower heads. Pepper’s blankets must have made a cozy home, too. I saw the little friend escape. Cute little bugger.

The nasturtium in the greenhouse had finally died from the first frost cold enough to reach the inside. The frost forced me to abandon packing in favor of winter prep in the garden. I was grateful for the excuse.

It was really cold but I relished every minute of garden work that day. And look how that plant had grown! The plant had been a volunteer. I had very little success getting nasturtium to sprout on purpose last year. But they popped up everywhere once I gave up on them and reused the soil elsewhere.

I’d come here to trim the peppers all the way down to overwinter them, hopefully. Then, I’d still planned to dig them up and move them into containers for the cold season. Then, I still thought we’d move much later and into a more permanent home. Now, the peppers are still in the ground. But they are trimmed and covered with straw. Hopefully, that’ll be enough to get them through. At least, the nasturtium won’t be rotting them through now. Oh, and we still don’t know what that brassica is.

It had actually frosted in here, so some of the fruit were no longer good. But I harvested a final harvest of chilies. Don’t ask me why Pepper kept sniffing my jacket. Must have smelled good. Mouse?

Once the fruit were harvested, I trimmed back the plant to almost nothing, leaving two tiny branches. We tried this with a balcony chili last year but kept the plant in the living room where it decided to regrow. The living room Lila Luzie kept on producing through winter, then died unexpectedly in spring.

The idea is to have the root system survive as a head start. It still feels wrong to chop it all off, even knowing it would die otherwise.
I’m giving the plants a chance. Keep your fingers crossed they’ll make it.

I tried to take apart these shelves to move them to the garden house. They were stuck pretty well. So, I abandoned the attempt and decided to store them assembled. We’ll take them apart to move them. The overgrown plot is ours until June, the open one until the end of the year. Plenty of time to figure it out.

The mouse will get to keep this board. They pooped and peed on it. They’ve earned it… Instead, I rescued my hoses into the garden house. They are in good shape. I’d like to keep them that way. It feels like I’m putting the garden into more than hibernation. I’m putting it on hold.

I expect the mouse to move back in. I’m okay with that. Though they already ate all the sunflower seeds… Sleep well, little mouse.

Meanwhile, I walked many more steps to move everything to the garden house. I even finally, actually, added a lock to the garden house now that I won’t be here all the time. Hopefully, they won’t stay there for long. Hopefully, we’ll have a new garden soon.

The first deep frost hadn’t stayed long, so the ground was already soft enough to work again. That meant, my second task of the day could be tackled, as well: preparing the bushes I want to take when we leave. This tiny currant bush had popped up earlier that year. We can’t take the large white currant, of course.

We won’t know the color of this for a while. White? Black? Red? The large white currant is closest, so we are hoping it spread here. I dug up smaller red and black currants from the other plot and took branches off the white currant. If everything works out, we’ll start the new garden with currants of all colors. Yay!

I added a bit of the currant’s soil from where I’d dug it up, then moved to the greenhouse where I had soil. I’d dumped this here to start a new bed with. Now, I shoveled it back into a container. Ah, well.

I put a lot of work into preparing the garden for next year, starting a lot of beds, even planting overwintering plants. Now, we live an hour from the gardens. I won’t be able to do all the things I’d planned. By now, the plan for next season is essentially down to potatoes and peppers. I’ve got endless amounts of sprouted potatoes in the garden house that will go into the ground in early spring.

Earlier this year, I’d dug up a few raspberries from the neighbor’s greenhouse. One survived. Now, the little raspberry will need to survive two more transplantings: this one into a pot, and then the final one. But starting the new garden with a few berry bushes already set up sounds like a wonderful plan. So, I decided to try.

I also dug up the lavender plants and thyme to move them into containers. Depending on the garden we move to, all these pink concrete planters might move with us. But even then, they’d need to be moved empty, as they don’t have bottoms.

So, all the little strawberries, the two surviving lavender plants, and the thyme got moved out. The strawberries my former neighbors gave me will likely be a feature of this overgrown plot forever. What started with an overflowing balcony planter of strawberry plants has spread widely around the terrace.

I’m only packing up a small portion to take. Most will stay and hopefully feed the wildlife and future gardeners. These are an alpine strawberry variety, so tiny little fruit with a lot of flavor and sweetness. I have yet to pack up the larger strawberry plants from the other plot. I forgot about them that day. The strawberries will need pruning and some care once they get moved out of the containers.

The containers will be spread outside the greenhouse and garden house for some protection from wind and weather. I never got around to making a second bed next to the door. The sheltered area makes the perfect overwintering spot.

While I am sure most of these plants will survive months there, I don’t like them staying there past spring. Once spring brings warmth and growth, they’ll soon outgrow the pots I chose. And the strawberries will spread there, too.

It was getting colder by the minute, so I rushed to dig up the small currant bushes next to the adult plants. I likely won’t get to harvest the bushes again. Not until the small ones grow in our next garden.

And with that, I return to the chaos of real life. Hopefully, not for long.
So long, and thanks for being here.