Morning photographs of the new cleared parts of the farm. Why I have found walls I never noticed before. If only the weeds will slow just once. (Well, they hopefully will until March).

And having done a bit of an internet search and consulted Nicolas I can say that the weed of choice at this time of year on the property has a most delightful name. Fleabane. It’s so incongruous until it flowers. Quite tall and most popular. But not an eyesore. Certainly not as bad as the nettles. Why is that there is always a gap between glove and the sleeve that nettles always find? Fairly tingling with smarting stabs.
Can’t for the life of me remember what else I did today. (I am writing this on a crowded train ten days later.)

Woke too early worrying about chimney sweeps, pool colour, electricity dramas and all sorts of negative woes. Happens sometimes, but just have to write a long list and work through it. I thought getting a chocolate fix at Vernoux would be a good start. That and a lovely fresh loaf of perfect bread. Shouldn’t have been surprised to find the bakers shut. Forgot it was Monday.

Nothing to do but come home, change into work clothes, march up to the top vegetable patch and scoff raspberries.

Restored; time to use the old tarpaulin that has been holding the stone sand temporarily place it over a future flower bed up near the potting shed. Nothing like planning for next years gardening to cheer oneself up.

And then it was down to the lower terrace below the pool and plant some grass seedlings. This bank needs stabilising.

And quite frankly this is the weirdest type of ‘gardening’ I have ever done. More like putting bits of decoration on a sloping cake. Will these little grasses stick? I have planned for this garden to stay in place for a few days before the next rain comes. Predicted for Thursday. And I may need to put in some sort of protection to stop the whole lot of work to wash away in the next dribble of rain.

Nicolas has arrived to do a mighty strim. Now that’s great news. See, some things cheer. Plus a large vase full of cleome and nicotiana flowers. The perfume is odd but evocative.

Lunchtime and I don’t feel I have achieved any grand projects yet. Up early to check on neighbours’ house. It is still standing to my relief. And then back to do bits of things. I have moved most of the soil from the excavated trench above the gîte. It has gone to the new future stipa bed just behind the pool wall. But it isn’t easy. Just the navigating with the wheelbarrow down the banks and onto the right spot is hard. Twice I managed to upend the wheelbarrow full of soil into the wrong spot. Half burying one of my just sown stipa beds. But that’s gravity for you. And living on a slope. I am girding my loins for the next barrow load. I’m going to be cautious and go the long way round.

A bit of salvia propagating, some stipa sowings. These are the activities which I am doing between loads of stones and soil. I want to take more Agastache cuttings. But each and every one has a flower on the end. Too prolific and vibrant.  The stipa seeds seem to disappear onto the landscape. Makes me realise just how many plants it’s going to take to cover this bank. But we need plants to stabilise this area. So much of the topsoil slipped down onto the lawn in the flash flood. I have perhaps planted (or stuck) the seedlings a bit close. Will do remedial work in a few days time.

End of day end of stone work. Gad am I glad that’s over. Annoyingly it looks such a small and pitiful pile now that its tidily out of the way. Still, one tidy section of the garden is no bad thing. Now we can sow grass seeds on this lovely bare patch of future lawn.

Need to change the filters – last night’s bath was rather green. Flood waters will do that.

In for lunch – fingers numb from moving all the stones to the pool edge. We are now complete; and have leftovers. Not sure where we are going to put the rest. They can’t stay where they are at the so called ‘piano’. We want to sow grass seeds there to create another lawn. I could use them as a mighty mulch somewhere. But need to think.

Other task this morning which was much more pleasurable was lawn mowing. Gad it’s fun. You just roar all over the grass creating beautiful pattern and it’s a mighty sward believe me. Pics to prove it. The east lawn has a few wonky bits that need work over the winter. But it looks gorgeous from a distance.

For dessert I intend to go down to an apple tree on a lower terrace that I spied. Most of the apples aren’t edible but the one below the house looks promising.

Mouth puckeringly tart. Yech.

Wheelbarrow, spade and stone time. I’m going to take some down the drive and fill in one of the monster pot holes near the letterboxes. And fix the sign, it fell down in the flood.
Did I say one pot hole? Four trips later and I feel like I have filled in a dozen. Don’t think it will do much good as rain will probably wash away the repairs. But it will make for a less bumpy ride. Not that I have used the car since I arrived on Thursday. Too busy doing garden and household chores to want to mooch up to Vernoux and buy the necessities like fresh milk and chocolate.

Each trip back up the road I collected sticks suitable for chipping. And in the last pass brought up a whole wheelbarrow load of mole hills. They are currently being put to use on the east lawn. I need to fill in the ruts left by the departed swing set. Eventually it will be lovely and smooth.

Right now it’s fun time again. More lawn mowing. I really should be strimming; but that will involve internal combustion engine rage if it won’t start after the fiftieth yank on the motor.

And here it is. There’s mowing a lawn and creating a lawn. And this one is definitely the latter. Oh joyous workhorse of a mower. It has earned its keep. This was a field of wild flowers, tussocks, waist high weeds, nettles, brambles and even some grass. Took ages just clearing the stones first. Well rocks. And then it was the laborious pass and pass and trim and mow. Beautiful. I know it’s not, but this is the future orchard we are planning for the winter, so I want to get it down and in a manageable state before we plot what tree is going where.

Pause for cup of tea. So restorative.
The rain became too heavy to even go out and do more work. So it was indoors for work, bath to warm up. I was just settling for a spot of internet research on whether my blooming plants of Agastache have a chance of surviving the winter here when to my surprise Nicolas turned up for a talk about future projects in the garden.

We took a good careful look at the damage from the floods. He said that 350mm of rain had fallen. I did a quick and furtive calculation. About a foot of rain in just one night. No wonder we had rivers of mud below the lowest wall. But every thing is standing and surviving and there are just a few more bits of wall to do.

I had contemplated going out and moving a few more of the river stones that are left over from the borders of the pool. But I realised that I can’t feel the tips of some of my fingers. So it will have to wait.

A morning of propagating and sowing – rebuilding after all the washing away. I suspect we have lost all those lovely seeds from Ailefroide that we cast onto the banks. So time to see what assets we have and get on with a new batch. One thing you can say is we are stipa rich. All that looting (sorry, collecting) near the train station has yielded a mighty sackful.

Another task was to get those last pink fir potatoes out of the ground and into sacks and under cover. They are fine (well, some are green from exposure to the air, but I suspect that sort of damage happened during the summer when I tired of earthing up and was glutted on the tubers we already had.

The asparagus are none the worse for the storm. Had to read up about the spears to see when I have to cut them down. Not brown yet, so I have a bit of time.

Here is the huge box of the last pink fir apples. Naturally I couldn’t just start in on the excavating. No, had to do a bit of weeding first naturally. I need to get up there with gauntlets before winter if I’m to beat back the brambles that are sneaking through the wire fence. But if I turn my head away all I can see are raspberries and more cabbages and jostaberry cuttings doing very nicely indeed.

Am making amazing tomato sauce with some of the tomatoes for lunch (plus rosemary which I need to make more cuttings before winter. ) With slow cooking the tomatoes are densely rich and tantalising.

The afternoon was spent around the pool. Doesn’t that sound glam? Harrdly, it was remedial time. Everyone arrived at once, Bernard to dig a trench up at our guest house; M. Pontgerard and Pierre-Yves to re-do the decking on one side of the pool. And two electricians to install the new satellite dish. And I seemed to trot between the tasks helping and answering questions and generally getting a quarter of each job done.

But by the end of the day there is television in the house, a safer guesthouse if it floods again, a better deck and a cleaner pool. That’s where I planted myself for the majority of the afternoon. I think I am going to be vacuuming for most of this month.

Tonight after dinner it was washing and grading potatoes while I had my one day of thrill at having 350 television channels to choose from. Mind you, once one has had a surfeit of German shopping programmes. Budapest TV and inane news every fifteen minutes on three different channels all at once it was a quick scuttle back to the BBC radio and listening to a proper world news programme whilst bent over the potato pile in the sink.

First day back in a fortnight and am taking lots of time to explore the damage of the storm. We had flash floods here last month. Over 20cm fell in one afternoon and over the night there was more than 30 centimetres (a foot) of rushing water roaring over the ground. Soil has been moved about. The guest house flooded. A foot of water went into the pool (and you can guess it wasn’t clean) but the main house is standing and so are all the new walls. So not bad really. And luckily Bernard came up to remove the stinking contents of our freezer and fridge. We were without electricity for about five days which was time enough to do all sorts of incubating and destruction. Our rugs and mattresses are out drying in the barn (and looking rather fetching out there I must say) and if I can spend a lot of time with all the windows and doors open the guesthouse won’t smell too bad. The road up to the house suffered a few mudslides. One which took out a lot of the bank and means there is no entry for heavy loads along our road for the rest of the year.

The Ardèche (and Drôme) have been declared natural disaster areas. But that’s mainly because none of our councils have enough in their budgets to repair all the roads. Our little track to the house took a beating. So too did our house sign. And the contents of the road heading up to our neighbour Jean-Daniel have been prettily rearranged. Mostly onto our lawns. And speaking of lawns. The main one near the pool took a lot of rushing water. The sooner we can plant up the bank the better our future garden will be.