Sowing seeds

I had brought some seed from the UK so I started sowing about a week after we moved in.
I sowed geraniums,cosmos, osteospurnums,sweet rocket, diascias and scabious.

All the seeds came up well under a sheet of plastic on the terrace but when I got to potting on I discovered you can`t buy pots here and I was scrabbling for yoghurt pots and margerine tubs.
I had no idea how hot and dry it would be and I had huge losses after they were planted out and some plants only started to thrive after the autumn rains.
The cosmos were a success and verbena bonariensis has survived the winter and made large plants. The geraniums that survived are going to be good sized plants this year and I have learnt a lot more about frequency of watering.
This year I am sowing half my seeds now and half in September to see which do best.
Cuttings of geraniums, margeurites and osteospurnams have rooted very well in the last month.

One year on and I'm still learning

Tomorrow, March the 1st, we will have been in this Kalivi for a year. I am going to review my first year of gardening here and then try a regular update from now on.
The small flower garden to the side of the house was choked with periwinkle apart from a huge spirea, a rose and a campsis on a pole.
I took about a week to clear it apart from a strip close to the wall whereour landlord said his mother had "precious onions". I replanted all the onions I had dug up and I hope they will come up again this year. They turned out to be ornithogalums which look like large white alliums.
There were also a few fritillaries in there which later in the year were badly attacked by lily beetle.