Today marks four weeks and one day since we moved here to suburbia. Sometimes it feels like yesterday (and sometimes looks like it, too), but then it feels like we’ve been here for months.

We have a different soundtrack here; kookaburras, magpies and families having BBQs at the local park. We get the occasional flyover from the airport. We hear the neighbours doing the washing up and their kids playing on the front steps. It’s NICE here. We were so used to the grime, noise and traffic in bohemia, it’s like we’re living on another planet now.

We still miss some aspects of bohemia — we had so much on our doorstep, including a brilliant corner shop. Our corner shop here is pitiful, they don’t even have 1.25L bottles of soft drink. They run out of bread by 9am and they don’t even sell cartons of cream! Blasphemy.

This week I felt inspired to start our new balcony garden. One of the reasons we fell in love with this place when we were house-hunting was the LIGHT. Homigod, the LIGHT! Our windows are north-east facing and our balcony is north-west facing. We have more light than we know what to do with. Here’s hoping that the light works its magic on my green-thumbing.

I started with some Mr Fothergill’s Cat Grass that we’ve used before and is an absolute cinch to grow. It’s already sprouting after 4 days.

On Thursday I bought a Décor self-watering pot and afro parsley seeds.

Why afro parsley? Because it’s virtually indestructible and it’s the right sowing season. I need to start small! And those self-watering pots are a must, lest you get stuck on that balcony watering plants every fricken day. Yawn. Do you know how hard it is to tweet and water plants at the same time?

Elvis was interested in the dirt, which I’m cool with provided he doesn’t see it as an au naturale litter tray.

I probably put too many seeds in the potting mix, but whatevs. I wanted to increase my chances of a successful first crop.

Bear and Elvis lost interest with my gardening efforts pretty quickly. Elvis loves eating the dead bits from the ‘allo Vera! and Bear prefers to drink the filtered water from the saucer of the Lillipilly plants. Thanks Bear, it’s not like I pour you fresh bowls of water twice a day. How rude.

Now that I’ve unpacked it, I’m scouring Indira Naidoo’s The Edible Balcony (I’ve been a fan of Indira’s blog for ages, but was too much of a tightarse to buy her book. Lucky for me, I was given the book as a (v generous!) housewarming gift – thanks Natty :)) I have visions of herbs without diseases for starters, then I’ll be ready for a challenge :)

Do you have a balcony garden? Got any tips for me?