I was reading Michael Pollan’s chapter on American feedlots in his book Omnivore’s Dilemma just as I was tucking into a corn crusted piece of chicken on Icelandair’s flight to Minneapolis. It was not a good bit of timing.  In fact I even had to stop eating the chicken and actually wait until the book turned to a happier subject (good organic farming) before I felt it was safe to digest this bad food again.  Omnivore’s Dilemma is the right book to read when you eat airline meals. It demonstrates the vileness of the product better than when you are at your farm eating food your have sown, grown and produced yourself. No way can I be smug here up at 30 000 feet. I’m blowing my carbon footprint for the year by flying. But visiting a dear friend Sarah each year is more sustainable for the soul than the guilt of what I’m doing to the planet by taking this flight to the Midwest. We will just have to live closer together in the future.

Actually one of the best things about this cramped flight is that I can actually think about future garden projects, and not be distracted by doing garden chores. There’s vision and there’s that not enough hours in the day issue just getting the basics done. I am doing all sorts of autumn and winters lists. And that can only be done well away from the garden itself.

I want to make another compost bin up in the forest and collect the leaf mould on the paths. Clear the paths, make the hummus work for the garden. I need to introduce more manure to the plot. And I think I’m going to need a trailer for the car to do it. Neighbours have horses. I need to get the stuff to the right spot.

Sow more land cress, mâche and radishes and even maybe beetroot while the soil is still warm. I’m pleased with the winter lettuces that are in small pots already. But more is going to be needed. And there is a risk that the ones already sown will suffer a calamitous event (deer, drought, drowning) while I’m away.

My beetroots were a disaster this year as the seedlings were munched off just as they were at that baby micro salad stage. More cloches, more food security. (You can see I have been reading too much about the agribusiness and food industry issues. Who on earth would call it food security when actually it’s just Being Eaten By a Deer. Right.  I only have an hour and a bit of battery life of this laptop and I want to watch the downloaded episode of Gardeners World. It will pass another hour of interminable flight beautifully.

More musings.
The Reinhardts kept sheep in the lower terraces of the farm to keep down the weeds. They did a good job and apart from escapes, served to maintain the land in a way that we can’t. But one of the pleasures of this year has been the wildlife we have been able to see from our dining table and even kitchen window. They had never seen the wild boar, deer and foxes that we have been lucky enough to watch.  And I suppose that is how we want to go on. But how do we manage in the future? The answer I suppose is just to keep on strimming. If you commit to just a terrace at a time (and I think there are about 12 terraces in all until you hit the vineyard) it will be cleared in a week. Must get that poor work horse of a strimmer cleaned next month. I had a frustrating hour trying to get it to spark into life last week and had to give up and go for the fun (positively frisky in comparison) of lawn mowing. But you can use a lawnmower on land that has a risk of stick or stone. So strim first and then maybe be able to maintain with lawn mowing later. We’ll get there eventually.

And speaking of mowing. If we are to have one terrace devoted to a new orchard I need to get the whole thing well mown, cleared and plotted out by autumn. And get in some sturdy deer proof fencing while the trees are young. Another task for the list.

Last watering of the potager. Such a lovely time early in the morning to drench all the cabbages and tomatoes and corn. The pumpkins are mighty and everything is still lush. May try and pull some carrots now the soil is not rock hard. I kept breaking off the tops of the fronds trying to yank them out yesterday and cursing my inability to learn.

Took photos of all the pumpkins with a small pot for scale. I’m curious to see how much they grow over the next two weeks.

Coming to London with a bag of potatoes, kale, carrots, eggplant, Savoy cabbage and beans. We ate the raspberries straight off the bushes on our way to the water tank. Amazingly it is still over half full. This time last year we had switched over to town water and the tank was decidedly low. September’s watering promises to be abundant and extravagant indeed.

First task of the day (well, apart from load number four of laundry) was to admire the discovery of yet another apple tree on our property. Just above the first floor of the guest house on the other side of the road. I was gazing in awe at it so much in fact (just one fruit which I fancied plucking) that I stepped into a patch of nettles. Ouch. It tingles as I type and that’s three hours later.

Had to go to town this morning, and as I was ‘just passing’ the garden centre, and just happened to see another couple with a few fruit trees in their car, I was tempted to do the same. Who says there is no power of persuasion when it comes to retail? I bought a replacement Melrose apple tree. The deer had definitely won round one of the apple wars with our lovely tree from the Welsteads. I have been prodding it and pleading with it for a few months now. But it is definitely dead. Ring barked by the look of it. And it looked so forlorn doing sentry duty as a stick at the edge of the lawn that I couldn’t resist getting the replacement.

Friendly people at Gamm Vert. They were full of commiserations about the damage, had helpful suggestions about protecting this new one. And even gave me a dozen strawberry plants as a gift.

It’s too hot to plant the tree just yet, so to escape the heat of the day I spent happy hours sowing seeds collected from Ailefroide and Valence TGV. The stipas are up and just poking their heads above the compost. I have tucked them out in the shade of the potting shed. And I hope the next 11 days will be kind to them. Or I can get Nicolas to help out with watering. I also planted up dozens of exotic salad seedlings. Oriental leaves I think the packet said. I may give some to Nicolas if they thrive. He has been busy this past week with food for a three day festival at St Jean Chambre and I doubt he has given a thought to the winter season. Plenty of winter lettuce potted up as well.

I need to order more Agastache Liquorice Blue. Best ‘doer’ of all the perennials in the trail bed. Watered some of the grasses I planted in the next terrace down from the potting shed. No sign of thriving, but at least they haven’t died.

Planted the apple tree and draped it rather ungraciously with netting. Anything to deter Daisy from attack. Even ate the one apple that was on the tree at already. Tart but rather tasty.

Lawn mowing. Picked four plump eggplant for dinner. Plus four peppers. And even ate a tomato. It’s a few days off ripe, but I am impatient. And by the shorthand you can tell that time is short and the day is at an end.

I think I have spent more time inside the bean tepee than out. Back after a week away, and first thing to do when getting to the house is to race to the potager and see if all is unmolested.

The tomatoes are huge but unripe. There are plenty o beans, aubergines and cucumbers. The pumpkins are huge and remind me that I really must read up on when they are ripe. We had the first corn kernel. An exotic looking beast and a bit chewy. The consistency of ‘is this quite ready to eat?’ I think we will wait a fortnight for the rest of the crop. And next year shall plant a more F1 variety.

The salad crop is as exuberant as the Savoy cabbages. And even as I marvel I can’t believe I have to leave all of this in two days time. It looks like it’s a vegetable bed that has its prime during peas and broad beans and then in September when the tomatoes finally kick in.

Up to the potting shed to see if the grasses have germinated. Yes indeed. Small growth on the white grass seeds. I have kilos of Ailefroide grasses to sow as well. We had fun collecting kilos of the seeds from majestic grasses that grow up in the Alpine meadows and rocks. But when? Busy day tomorrow putting both houses to bed.

Before heading off I collected loads of vegetables from the garden for the cool box, and tidied up the tomato plants. Pulled off a lot of the leaves and tied in the monster orbs. Shame they are relentlessly green. Maybe when we come back from rock climbing they will have heeded nature and turned red.

Lunch today – home grown potatoes, mushrooms from the forest, garlic from the vegetable bed. Only the eggs weren’t our own. One starts to have fantasies about self sufficiency when you can eat meals as memorable as that.

More stone moving in the afternoon and then we scattered grass seeds again over the lower terrace. I have reached my limit as a builder’s labourer with two days of stone work, so in an attempt to distract body and brain from the sysiphisian task, (no, I can’t spell it either. Typed that way it looks Armenian), I sowed containers of grass seeds up at the shed, lifted half a row of pink fir apple potatoes and placed all the little grass seedlings out into the open (shade) as we are going away to the Alps for a week.
Bit of caterpillar squashing and a long session of watering. Not a bad day’s work.

Not time for gardening today. But I did manage to pluck a huge sack of grass seeds from the wonderful forest of stipa grasses that grows around Valence TGV. Not sure if they are ripe, but we shall see.

The stones have arrived. A big truck from the quarry down in the valley full of gravel lumbered up the road this morning and promptly got stuck trying to reverse up to our pool. We had set out a few options of where the driver was to deliver the stones: tarps at the ready in locations close to the final destination. But his truck was so big and our terraces so playful that he admitted defeat rather swiftly and upended the load close to the house. Apart from the quarter of the load that fell onto the road. And of course it was just as poor Danielle our neighbour wanted to drive past.

So we now have a monster pile of 3.5 cubic metres of stone at an uncomfortable and slightly uphill distance from their destination. Nothing to do but fill the wheelbarrows and trundle away. Nicolas gave me a tip on back bending and shovel use (vital) and we worked away at filling the gap between the pool and the lawn.

Looking back now that my back is no longer aching it felt like a near perfect day.
Heavy work in the garden – stone moving
Lying prone after lunch on the sofa catching a bit of the Olympics on the radio
More heavy garden work
Tea with friends, Ronny, Yvonne and Nicolas
Quick visit to Lynn and Jeff to deliver tadpoles
Back for about three hours of lawn mowing
In at sunset for a cold beer.

En route to check for toads in the pool, I thought it best to have a check for another pest. Caterpillars. Start the day with caterpillar patrol. I think they are called Piryte de choux which is more dramatic than cabbage moth. Sounds like cabbage pirates, and they are of the destructive and swashbuckling type of pest – the helpful electrician (one of six people who came to our rescue with parts of the house affected by the lightning strike this past month) told me their name. As well as the name of all the mountains nearby which I dutifully wrote down but can’t remember.

More chipping for the new flower bed.

1130 am and that’s my favourite sound. An almighty din. I’m chipping, Bernard is drilling holes in the walls of the building for the rose bushes and Nicolas is chain sawing logs to make the steps to the path to the pool.

Went up to help Nicolas with the log rolling. I’m a wimp, came up with the car and stacked them in the boot and drove them round to the courtyard. I live in dread of one log taking flight and rolling right down into the pool. Happy to help out I zipped back up to the forest (a lie, it’s hot and sunny and one plods rather than races) and collected more sticks.

Later I worried that I am going to lose most of these cavalo nero to the cabbage white butterfly. More cloches are going to be needed if I am going to have safe plants. Just spent a very squishy half hour hunting the cabbage white offspring. And believe me, you get very green and gruesome hands from the dirty work.

I have come in for a break from wheelbarrow and soil work. Started on the building of the second flower bed today (well, have been ravaging the first to set up the second.) And even though they are only about one hundred metres distant, they do have two steep terraces between them. So it has been hot work. First I needed to lay down a layer of mulch from the compost bin. The bed sits mostly on bedrock, so if these grasses and verbenas are to thrive they needed more soil and food.

Then the laborious work of getting soil from up near potting shed, wheeling it all the way down the wonky path, then the treacherous steps (not doing that again) then wheel onto the grass path beside the vegetable bed (dodging past the blackberries) and onto the lawn.

Can’t wait to have the job done. But I think I have two or three wheel barrow loads to go. So on with a strong cup of tea and a reviving big of choc.

I was slowed but not hampered by rain. And now the bed starting to take shape. Doing grasses directly around the rocks that we piled up beforehand to make a rather artistic scene. And verbenas and nepetas in between.

Done. Watered mightily and we shall have to see if the verbena survived the rather abrupt transplant.

I need to pick more sticks to make yet more wood chips as a mulch. But it’s hot and steamy and rather unpleasant to forage in this heat. But needs must.

When I was uprooting the grasses and the many verbenas I couldn’t help but notice that the two stars of the trail bed are the cheapest: the liatris sciata bulbs (bit like sciatica so easy to remember after my compost work) cost only 99pence from the discount store. Must go and beg and see if they have any more. And the Agastache Liquorice Blue came from a packet of seeds. They have the unfortunate appearance of stinging nettles before they flower. But once out and in flower they are performing well. And on minimum watering or fussing. They will both feature in future flower plans.