BeanCam

(Image updates at 15 minute intervals)

Above is a (more or less) live view of the end of my balcony. Specifically, it's a view of some planters, and the plants contained therein, which are hopefully in the process of growing a privacy screen between my apartment and the three other balconies, half a dozen air conditioning units, and a dog-walking area behind the building. When it has grown in, it will also provide a bit of shade for the large glass doors that lead to the balcony, which currently receive direct late-afternoon sunlight in the summertime, heating up my apartment. The large hanging baskets contain Red cherry tomato plants, and the small ones contain spider plants.

10 September 2007 - Yesterday, I had an interesting bloom on one of the vines:

...a mutant Blue Star flower that had only four lobes, instead of the usual five (you can see a normal bloom on the same vine just in back of it).

I also added a few more sprouts to the balcony, in the bucket in the lower right corner of the frame. They're just garden-variety morning glories - Flying saucer, Picotee Red, Scarlett O'Hara, and Milky Way - most of them from commercial seed packets, so they're nothing super-special. Still, I'll hopefully have enough growing time left before it gets cold to see them make some flowers and seeds. they'll certainly have time to make some vines to climb on the railing there, so we'll see what we get.

5 July 2007 - The vines are coming along fairly well, and have filed in a lot lately. The Star of Yelta vines have produced a ton of flowers, most of which are now in the process of setting seeds. Because the satellite uplinks at work are affected by weather, most of which comes from this direction, I've upped the refresh rate to once every five minutes, so the BeanCam can act as sort of an "early warning system" as the rain approaches. I'm also experimenting with some weather data. Pointing a camera at a thermometer display is hardly the "right way" to do it, but I had an extra camera feed that I wasn't using, so I figured I'd throw together a "quick and dirty" solution to give it a shot. Also, I finally got rid of the little dead rock pine tree that's been sitting in the planter all this time, and replaced it with some more morning glories that have been too big for their pot for a while.

A few shots of what the vines have produced so far:

31 May 2007 - We have a winner!

One of the Candy Pink vines finally reached the top of the railing, so I supposed it was time to do something about the top half of the opening. I moved some of the hanging baskets around, and built a "harp" of strings for them to climb on. They've really accelerated their growth now that they've got some real leaves on them, and gotten established on the sunny side of the railing. I'm guessing that it won't take long for them to make it to the top of the strings and start filling out.

10 May 2007 - BeanCam goes live, at least tentatively, with the transplanting of morning glory seedlings into the window-box planters. Anti-bird mesh netting is temporarily placed over the planters, to allow the vines to get established without being used for bird food or nest-making materials.