Una Pianta di Limone and Dolphins

This morning I was greeted by a pianta di limone, a little lemon tree in our garden !!! Bellissima !!! I feel overwhelmed! It is not only a sign of spring, it is a mile stone in our renovation process! We have our first inhabitant: My little lemon tree! This is so sweet of my in-laws ... Grazie Lidia, Grazie Angelo!


This little lemon tree is a special one: "Questa pianta è una qualità di limone che fa sempre fiori e frutti in continuazione. Come vedi dalla foto c'è un limone maturo altri due in fase di crescita e fiori su altri rami." - This plant will always carry fruits and flowers, like in the picture! - And I confirmed via email that my little lemon tree can be planted right there in the corner of our tiny garden.


But this was not the only surprise that Angelo had sent me over night. The other pictures showed dolphins seen from our terrace yesterday! They can be seen quiet often at that time of the year. ... Oh, Calabria sounds like paradise... (I uploaded the pic in small size, because you hardly can recognize anything.)

Before and After

The location is the garden floor. And these are the outside wall of the house and the wall towards the church. The team did a great work on these two walls! On the left you see the situation before in summer 2006 and on the right you see the result after the renovation started in autumn 2007.

I wish I could present this nicer. The mosaic tool of flickr always cuts something and the ACDSee thing I use does not show how to put two photos together and the PhotoStudio 5.5 is hiding this feature somewhere... so I did screen captures. Not appropriate enough to appreciate the work that was done.

----------------
Help needed:
Does anyone knows a good shop or website for VINTAGE CHILDREN FURNITURE ???
Grazie!

Inspiring Terrace Gardens

I found the following great ideas for our garden and terrace by Mylandscapes, UK based contemporary roof garden and terrace garden design specialists via one of my favorite blogs Desire to Inspire.




The alternative is to use planter pots of different shapes and same colour, e.g. blue or terracotta. But the first solution would allow an automatic watering for the plants in the dryer summers.
In China, these pots are so cheap. The biggest would be around 12 - 18 USD. I could ship lots of them...


... downstairs, garden with grass and some tiles for the seating area...
... and as we have no space for a pool, I thought of a cheaper version ...

*******************************************

And this is our modest reality, the roof terrace, where you can harvest capers at the moment.

And the 'garden' viewed from above. I would keep the floor covered with grass. A purple bougainvillea, a white oleander, a lemon tree and a agave plant, maybe some cactus (outside the fence on the rock) would be typical plants from the region.