Parasol pines
I’m still recovering from my nasty flu bug, thus the reason for contemplating the plants on my balcony yet again. Also called stone pine, these trees are abundant in this part of France. Thanks to a commenter on my previous stone pine attempt, I planted and cared for these two seeds differently. Both are from the forests in the area, their seeds collected on my way back to work from lunch one September day. I planted them soon after and let Nature take her course, not watering them myself (except for this particular photo, when they’d been dry for more than a week). I was delighted to see them sprout a month ago, and am looking forward to future seedling development since stone pines are quite interesting when young.
The brown nut-looking thing is a used noix de lavage, soap nut (also called wash nut). I’ve been washing my clothes with them for a year now and will never go back to detergents — in addition to being eco-friendly, they get my clothes cleaner. The only things I add to the wash nuts are a fully-biodegradable softener and sodium percarbonate, which helps prevent greying. (For anyone interested, both are by Ecover.)