Getting ambitious on the balcony.

The balcony is like the rest of our apartment, which is to say it's petit.

You see, Monsieur J and I share a whopping 350 square feet of living space. Somehow it doesn't bother us. The good news is that barring a move to Hong Kong, Moscow, Paris or New York, we probably won't have to live anywhere smaller ever again. There's always a bright side!

What started as a small collection of plants on the balcony has morphed into some serious urban gardening over here on rue des fontaines. In addition to a thriving collection of cacti and succulents, we have a banana tree, an olive tree, a yucca, a lime tree, a grape vine, rosemary, basil and an overflowing pot of mint.

I'm here to confirm that we are officially reaching max capacity.

However, you may also remember a mention of tomato plants...


I think I told myself that cherry tomatoes would be smaller than regular tomatoes. Yes, this is true for the fruit, but not so much for the plants. They have gone from 6 inches to over 3 feet in three weeks. Fuzzy stems and yellow flowers are sprouting every which way, making it a real challenge to even access the other plants enough to water them. It's turning into a real jungle!


I'm hoping our harvest of delicious little cherry tomatoes will make this slightly crazy endeavor worth the effort. In the meantime, I love opening the door every morning to check and see what may have changed overnight. You'd be surprised at what can happen in the span of a few hours.

Today the banana tree presented a tightly coiled new leaf marked by a single drop of dew. A cactus that weathered an entire winter outside has recently revived itself and is now in bloom. Haricot vert is forever gravitating towards the sun; he just can't get enough.


Has anyone ever seen a plant like this before? We bought it at the market two years ago and I've never seen anything remotely similar since. We just call him green bean!