Gardening on the Fire Escape

Our condo association suddenly decided that we can have a flower box on the fire escape.  I am personally skeptical about this lapse in fire safety.  The association also stated that anyone caught on the fire escape in a non-emergency situation will be fined $500.   So does mounting the flower box and watering the plants constitute an emergency?  But I have always wanted a flower box, so here I go.  Grow, herbs, grow!

Sweet basil and parsley hiding behind petunias.  (Please, no aphids, please!)

Another pot of sweet basil, and a pot of cilantro!

Gardening

Somehow this weekend turned out to be mainly about gardening. I do realize that it is August already. But you can think of it as a learning experience/testing the waters.

On Saturday I joined a few neighbors to plant some flowers in front of our building. We kept hoping that our landscaper would do it, but for various reasons that never happened. So we pitched in a few bucks, picked up some pretty flowers at Home Depot, and stuck them into dirt here and there.

Our building has a little courtyard in the back, with two areas of dirt (dirt mind you, not soil) where weeds and ivy have been growing wildly for as long as we have been living here.

Inspired by yesterday's gardening adventure, I cleared the ivy from about two square feet of dirty in the courtyard and planted a couple of herbs.

Honestly, I do not expect any harvest at this point. I mainly want to see if anything will grow at all. If it will, I just might try a real vegetable garden next spring.