Wednesday, May 25, 2011

My neighbours’ window boxes

 

my neighbour's window boxes

Around the corner from my house there are two houses side by side: the first, which faces onto 13 Nisan Caddesi, one of the three  main thoroughfares of the old town, is one of the grander stone houses of Ayvalik. It is three storeys high, tall and thin in the classic Ayvalik manner, with an enormous, elaborately carved stone doorway, and an overhanging top storey. Many of my neighbours, renting the smaller, more ramshackle houses in the narrower sokaks, are villagers from the impoverished south east of Turkey who have migrated to the more prosperous west in hope of a better life;  the owner of this house, however, is more likely to be from Istanbul or Ankara, as are many of the owners of the larger restored Ottoman Greek houses in Ayvalik.

The house  has been immaculately restored, and in the summer pink and red trailing pelargoniums cascade down from its wrought iron balconies:

 neighbour's window boxes

The second house, nestled up against the side of the first around the corner in the side street, is a tiny two-up two-down cottage, with a small walled yard:

little house next door

It is lived in by a jobbing builder, his Azerbaijani wife, and their little son, a delightful child of unusually angelic disposition in an area teeming with feral infants. Here, although the opportunities for floral display are more limited,  my neighbour engages in some creative container gardening on top of the yard wall:

flowers on the wall

At the front of the house she only has room for a single window box, but it is quite beautiful, as is her enigmatic smile, glimpsed behind the flowers and wrought iron.

neignbour amidst pelargoniums

14 comments:

  1. I've just mentioned your blog on mine (Lady Mondegreen's Secret Garden), so it was lovely to find your post showing on my dashboard this morning - and a garden orientated one at that!
    A pity cuttings can't be shared across the world. Your neighbours' geraniums are gorgeous.

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  2. Makes me wish I were there, wandering those streets and experiencing those houses and flowers. Maybe one day... Janet

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  3. The house really look beautiful. When I had been to Malta, I saw house like the ones here.
    honeymoon in Goa

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  4. Beautiful pictures. Yes, I would love to be wondering the streets of Ayvalık. Google Earth will have to do for now. Please keep tantalizing us!
    vicki

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  5. Congrats! All the pictures are just so wonderful! Love this style! Like the flowers too. :)

    lisa_d

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  6. Amazing pictures and also your blog design....

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  7. It clearly symbolizes transparency.

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  8. Ready for another update!! ;-)

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  9. OK, Caroline... I have given up on seeing the inside of the house you found, but I still want to see what the Camel Barn Library looks like inside. Wake up and post!!

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  10. just a gentle nudge to remind you to continue this story..... ;-)

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  11. nice post ..
    really very nice your post

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  12. love this post
    because your article is very interesting to read

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