Too many vases, too little text.

Here is the spring green selection for this time of year: euphorbia wufennii, viburnum, tulips, white lilacs and the ubiquitous cow parsley.  I have made up my first big vase for the year.

The flowers are only just open.  I was thinking I would have to travel further down the road to get riper blooms, but these will do.

And I was going to bring in some branches of quince blossom. But I resisted. There’s such a lovely explosion of flowers for the first time that I dare not disturb.  The mighty pruning of earlier in the year seems to have done half the work.  Now let’s see if we get any fruit.  Fingers crossed.

A day of firsts: first strim of the year. And the mighty machine worked second pull of the cord (oh joy unbound).  First sign of the wildflowers coming up in the calabert garden: I spotted a cornflower.  And we ate our first strawberry of the year. Heaps of fruit there – we just need this weather to keep up and ripen them.

No time for gardening for another day: more chores.  But the end is in sight and I’m poised to cut flowers for the house. A favourite past time indeed.  The lilac is scenting the whole courtyard; the tulips are bursting out of the barrel.  And everywhere I look there’s blossom.

There’s strimming still to do this afternoon. But my batteries are running on empty. I even took a short rest by the pool (newly opened and just vacuumed) to gaze at lizards and wasps and birds.  But came indoors to scrub the kitchen tiles after a bit.

So here it is: the finished article.  Lunchtime today Nicolas was backfilling the soil behind the wall while I was sowing grass seeds on the bare earth in front.  Wonderful to have it done.  And so quickly in terms of walls.  I am delighted to say that the cement mixer goes away today and may not return. Tidy at last.

I didn’t have any time for gardening today: just managed to sow some gaura summer breeze seeds, some normal gaura, climbing beans fasold and blue lake.  And I potted on some basil.  The rest of the day was spent clearing out the first floor of our guest house.

Twas a trudge to clear out three years of accumulated junk and spider webs. And sweep and vacuum this huge space.  It’s twice as large as my first ever apartment, and will be amazing once it’s done.

For an encore I cleared out the calabert’s wood supply using the car as a giant wheelbarrow.  And everything is hidden neatly down in the stables.  Thank goodness there’s another building on the property we can hide stuff.

At least with every trip I managed to sniff the just-out lilac bush: I never realised the white lilac had such a wonderful perfume as it only flowered for a week last year, and that was during a rainy spell.  And that reminds me, tomorrow first thing I must water the veg.

I think I know what it must feel like to live in an aviary. I have spent most of the morning crouching under the big netting in the beans and pea quadrant working away at chores.  Every time I look I up I see nets, and in the distance I hear a din of bird calls.  The crows are busy overhead today. And the woodpecker and cuckoo are making a racket.

It’s hot.  Suncream and hat and sleeves rolled up.  And with a breeze that brings cherry blossom wafting over the whole terrace.

Ooh, purple indeed. Lack of sleep and not enough tea.  Fear not, it will settle and you will just get lists. Promise.

And here it is: eight runner beans, over sixty cosmos plants, four nasturtiums, a row of spring onions  and one tomato plant. And mulch, mulch, mulch. Five o’clock and I’m done. In all senses.

The cosmos is hopefully going to form a small hedge against the deer who didn’t seem to like it last year.  I planted purity, sensation and a new variety (for me) dazzler.  The purity doesn’t do as well for me as the sensation; the white tends to get a bit ratty by midsummer.  But naturally it doesn’t really shine until the autumn so I have to be patient with its ragged bits.

Passing the roses on the courtyard level (to escape the heat briefly) I removed some errant grubs which have started to colonise. So it feels good to be on top of that.  But there is so much else to do.

What else?  Oh yes,  I watered the trees on the lower terraces, admiring the blossoms on the neighbouring apples, some on my newly planted trees, and looked with a bit of concern at the burgeoning grass. Time to bring back the horses.

I have come in for afternoon tea. Fresh bread and nutella and a strong, large cup of builder’s tea. Reviving.  I have spent the afternoon in the potager trying to plant out all the trays and trays of veg.

The morning was devoted to driving to town and picking up our new terrace awning.  I shoehorned it into the car by having it hang half out the front passenger window and half out the back. Most playful on the highway.

I’m going to try my luck and plant swiss chard in the lower potager again this year – despite the entire crop being dessimated by four legged fiends.  I have managed to sow quite a few trays, so I shall put others up on the top vegetable bed and hope they never venture there to forage.

So under one cloche went 16 swiss chard of all colours, and 16 lettuce seedlings. As these cloches are right next to the freshly mown path I couldn’t resist planting in bare feet. That’s the first of the year.  And it felt wonderful. Naturally stepping onto the bark chip path wasn’t the same sensorial experience – especially as the bark is nice and crispy now. But it made the soft respite of lawn feel all the more therapeutic.

I can’t quite walk all the way up to the potting shed (forgot to bring down the rake) in bare feet, as I haven’t strimmed the steps yet, but one day…

Next in went the extra lettuce left over from the main section: where to put them? I just alternated them in rows in the broad bean beds. I’m short of protective cloches so I have to squish things up.  Still it gave me a chance to sow the last few broad bean seeds in the gaps, and cover the entire bed in a new mulch.  This is the potting mix  from Castorama that you wouldn’t use on precious seedlings in the pots as it’s too rough, but for the price you can’t beat it for mulching. (Two euros fifty for fifty litres.)

For variety (and a chance to sit down rather than crouch) I started to cut away the weeds that are threatening to engulf the soft fruit trees. You could barely see the little blueberry shrubs under their mantle of weediness.  And the jostaberries and blackcurrants now look a bit more tamed.  I need to strim around the back here too. But I can’t see that happening until I get all the plants in and spend a bit of time painting and cleaning the guest house this week.

Up at the shed in the fork hunt I noticed that the sunflowers were drooping and threatening to grow out of their pots. So a quick executive decision and I have decided to plant them beside the future cucumbers in the newly made cucumber cage.  They need support when they grow and I have run out of places to put up more poles. It may crowd out the cucumbers, but that will be a future gardening challenge. It will also mean they are exposed to passing wildlife, but I’m quite hoping that they will grow up and away before that drama occurs.

The lumpy looking soil is a mulch of one year old horse manure from Claude’s.  It looks dreadful but I’m hoping it will feed and suppress weeds over the next month or so before I have to apply another mulch over the top.

More? This is a bit of a shopping list of achievements I’m afraid. But the cabbage seedlings came next. I have heaps as we are quite the brassica family fans.  Greyhound variety planted quite close together for a summer green.  How many? Maybe sixty plants. You get dizzy trying to count.   Some of these seedlings looked a bit nibbled from last fortnight’s planting out. Slugs? Or mice? Naturally if I was bright I would go out tonight with a torch and check. But by 10pm I’m fading so fast I couldn’t imagine doing it. Mind you the moon is so bright I could probably do it without the torch.

I have one spare cloche for cabbages in this quadrant. I wish I had an extra one, but Bernard, the mighty cloche builder has moved away now and doesn’t do these small little tasks that have made a great difference to the garden. Remind me that in my next life I want to come back as a carpenter, it would be a very useful skill.  I think there are 48 cavallo neros in this cloche.  But it reminds me I should sow some more this month and plant them out in the top vegetable plot as insurance.

There’s more I’m sure: oh yes, weeding and thinning. I did all the carrots, all the beetroot, an extra pass of the radish and then went doolally from so much close weeding work and went inside to lie down.

So much to do, where do I start? Well the first task of course is to give Ulysse his daily apple. Nothing quite beats the intelligent look of an animal who knows he is about to get a treat.  He has well and truly suckered me into feeding him an apple a day. He waits just the other side of the fence from my potting shed. Note the Ardeche mountain hill gait. He can stand there perfectly poised for ages waiting for me to appear.

And once that’s done I can get on with work.  I thought it best to plant out all the potted plants first. So in went the two last persicaria bistorta superbas in the east garden. And then these four stipas.  Now they don’t look much now. In fact they are not too different from the weeds around here. But here is my inspiration: this stipa was planted a year ago just a few feet away and it’s thriving.  And more importantly surviving the winter.

I’m still debating whether I ought to move the other stipa gigantea that is hiding in the lilac bed. It is a touch crowded and may prefer the wide ranging space of the courtyard.  Anthropomorphising or what this morning? Must be the unpasteurised cambembert for breakfast.

The main thing is that I don’t plant anything sweetly scented that will attract the wasps. This is our main eating area in the summer and we have a challenge enough with the hornets flying above us and gorging on the grapes.

The euphorbias have come through the winter so well – they are dazzling as you look down the herb garden.  A perfect foil for hiding the compost bins.  I am mulling over whether I ought to plant more in autumn and get a good hedge of these beauties at the end of the potager and where the lawn starts.

But no time for that: I need to get my two other euphorbia polychromas into the bed under the mirabelles. Must take my secateurs. I noticed that the plums are suckering like mad.

These forget me nots suprised me a bit – didn’t expect them to be this twee a colour. I had thought I sowed only blue varieties. Well, good thing they are annuals (or biennials). I’ll think of something more fetching next time. Still, the polychromas look fine.

Here’s hoping that these monardas will look better.  I am planting out an awful lot of flowers in the wall edge of the potager. It’s the extension to the strawberry bed that bends it way around the plot and abuts the staircase.  It’s quite a mixed bag, but that could be fun. The main thing is they will get more attention in the watering over the summer as I will want to water the cabbages and beans and peas nearby.  I am a bit short of bark chip mulch – eek. But no time for that this trip I suspect.

And that was about the sum of my gardening for the day. Instead I had a visit from the plumbers and the builder.

By  4pm I hauled out the mower and did a spot of tidying.  It takes about three hours to do the orchard, the approach to the house, the main lawn, the walnut walk and Alice’s path. And the grass at the parking area at the far eastern edge of the property. I could possibly have done it in less time. But I’m making use of the mulch to put between the potato rows up at the top vegetable plot.

For those of you who have visited this farm you will appreciate the tedium of trudging up with a full grass cuttings wheelbarrow load from the lower reaches all the way up the top. But it will keep down some weeds, and that’s worth the toil.

I guess you could call this the first crop: not of the year, but the first on the farm.  Almost three years ago I dug the asparagus bed and told myself: not long now.  Just three more years.

And here it is. One small bunch of green asparagus. I only took one spear from each crown: next season we can take the lot.  But if we aren’t here, then we are going to miss them.

If you must go away for ten days at such a crucial time of year, then this is what happens. And it’s not just the asparagus. Flowers are bursting out all over.

How about this for a front drive: all the cherry trees are in exuberant blossom. Forty four of them.  I can barely fit them in the same shot. So here are few views to admire. As I was snapping away I was getting showered lightly in petals. My favourite type of spring snow.

I was worried that I would miss the tulips entirely. Every day the temperature has been rising. It was 20C today in the shade and I was as busy as the bees flitting from flowers to admire them and try and capture the excitement. A long winter and all is forgiven when you can get this.

The tulips in the middle of the potager are as sumptuous as I had hoped: and naturally I am already plotting more plantings to link the edges of the potager with this display of colour.

I get the feeling that if I don’t keep popping up with a detail of these red tulips you will feel a bit greened out. But that’s what you get: peas are up, broad beans are up and some are flowering. I’m going to have to remember to take the cloches off them during the day so the beans get pollinated.

The charlotte potatoes are up in the lower potager and I even have a few in the top potager. I need a good session up there in the next few days. The weedproof fabric  has to come up and I need to get the brassicas in. And there are a few stray raspberries straying away from their designated area.

Nicolas very kindly watered for me while I was away. Well, in between building the wall. We are almost there  – he thinks he has just a few hours to go to finish the top of this beautiful feature. I can’t believe how he manages to find the flat stones for the top.  The lawnmower in me is dying to get this part of the track mown and tidied. There are a few leftover stones: buried under lush grass. And the cement mixer can go back into the stables for another year.
It is a shame that the grass gets killed under the protective tarp: but I have my jumbo five kilogram pack of grass seeds ready to leap in and sow.

Oddly, there has been no rain for ten days: but the grass that I sowed next to the potting shed has germinated and is up.  But I want to landscape the end of the lawn and into the duck pond. But I suspect I will need some damp weather to get it started.

But enough of future plans; on with the picture show. The tulips in the courtyard have all come up – a much more subtle display than the vegetable garden.

But I am pleased because I do have a fondness for these green and white tulips. And they blend in rather sweetly with the new growth on the roses.  Naturally if the roses do as well as last year you won’t see anything but gushy pink blooms and green fly.  But for now I am happy.

I had forgotten about these white flowers in the rocks of the lilac bed. But they have come out at the same time as my white tulips.

If the white lilac managed to flower at the same time it would have been a symphony of similar colours.  But it is barely threatening to flower. A shame as I had spotted the white lilac on my drive up the mountain (just a few hundred feet below us) and it was out. One must learn to be patient.

It’s the same with the white wisteria. It’s a joy when if finally blooms. But for now it’s the double narcissus and tulips in the bed below which draw the eye.

I couldn’t resist snipping some for the first flowers for the house. If all sprouts well I will be starting off the huge vase of cow parsley next week. I spotted the wildflowers by the side of the road and will take myself on a walk with secateurs when I get some free time.

Free time? Hah! All I want to do is fling myself and weed and nurture and plant.

Here is the bounty inside the potting shed. Not a shrivelled seedling in sight. Every plant seems to have either germinated or put on growth.  Well, the verbena bonariensis are still sulking. But I have even found the cleomes up. That’s quite a feat.

Usually at this stage of my walk about the property I get into a dither about where on earth I start.  I suspect I’m going to have to get the cosmos into the ground fast. And the marigolds can go next to the carrots.

They are up and putting on some pretty growth. There’s no way I can take a picture of the detail
of the vegetable bed. You can get big fat peas and beans but tiny carrot seedlings will just disappear into the background dirt.
Sorry, soil.

I had a huge watering session – a perfect way to get a good look at what is up.  But I didn’t get to the shade garden and I suspect it will get a bit more neglected this year. I have added some compost and mulch around each plant and just have to hope that they will cope. I’m delighted to see lupins and lilies coming up and the thalitctrum and digitalis are getting beefier and fatter and more promising every day.
The ones in Hyde Park in London have already thrown up their spikes. And I am going to inspect carefully when I have a light weeding session to see what is happening.

To my surprise, some of the euphorbia polychromas have come up. They looked positively dead and scraggly in February and I despaired of getting them through another winter.  I even brought out two more from a plant nursery in the Chilterns.  I couldn’t resist them as they were dead cheap and very healthy. Finding a small nursery that lavishes care on plants is quite irresistable.  And at long last I have my stipa giganteas. Four of them which were too good to pass up.  I have placed them in the courtyard and tweaked and repositoned them all afternoon as I trudged past.  Tomorrow I shall plant them.

One last look at the tulips before I turn in to chase builders, plumbers and bulldozer men. I have set my alarm for super early and drawn up a mighty list. This is what it’s all about.

Now I am being disingenuous: the chipping has taken two days, not one. And I still haven’t finished. My poor chipping machine gave a cough and splutter after many hours toil this afternoon and finally stopped.  A sure sign that I ought to as well.

So I have packed it away in the cellar and shall attend to the very last teensy eensy bit of sticks left behind next week. Or the week after. If the chipper needs to go down to town for a service it may be a while before I attack the last sticks. 

And that can’t be too soon. There’s such an element of what if when you chip: what if the sticks fling themselves back out at me? what if they jam?  Actually I have perfected the art of standing beside it rather than in front and in the firing line, and feeding large then small in a sequence that seems to work. Well, until it stopped. But enough of brown sticks. Here’s a spot of green to cheer up the blog.

I have done a mighty mow. Everything is at that bursting out stage of the garden, and I want to keep the lawn bits neat before the prairie takes over everywhere.

And I felt I could do with a long walk. And believe me, after mowing all the bits I like to keep green and lush it was eight o’clock at night before I finished. Doing the whole thing takes half a day.   But luckily I didn’t have the lower terraces to plunge into; the horses had done their work in that part of the farm.

I start with the orchard as it’s the closest to where the lawnmower lives (in the stables – a suitable place for a mighty beast), and then make my way up the track below the pool and end up at the area we call the piano.  It’s just the lawn beside the pool.  But if you stand up above it you get a perfect picture of the grand piano shape that it has become.

I’m dying to do a bit more landscaping in the area just beyond that – the place we call the duck pond. But I need to move all the wood first. And I just didn’t fancy hauling loads of wood this weekend.  Alice did her heroic bit last weekend.  Talk about putting your houseguests to work.  So I really should have done my share.  But I do have in mind the same trick we did with all the stones last month: drive up to the edge of the pool and load up the boot.

From the track it was back to the house; pausing en route to admire the wonderful daffodils that have finally come out. Thalia. Wnderful delicate white doubles.

And then the olive orchard bit of lawn that swings up past the potager and leads on to the main lawn. Quite a stride of grass indeed.  But it looks lovely, and it was so great to be out in such strong spring sunshine and listening  to the din of birds in all the trees. Cuckoos, woodpeckers, don’t ask me name the rest.My brain is too addled to think.

And then when I had filled the grass catcher with all the lawn clippings, I emptied them out over the area where the tomatoes are to grow in the vegetable bed.  It should make a good mulch to keep down the weeds a bit.  It’s just a shame that it doesn’t stay this vivid, vibrant green.

I have found last year’s large net and draped it over the bean section of my vegetable bed. It isn’t much of a deterrent (is that how it’s spelt? It looks like deodorant if you squint) against deer, but it might baffle them slightly en route to the juicier parts of the plant.  All the peas are coming up with a very successful germination rate. And my broad beans are poking out of the mulch. Tomorrow I really must get onto those sticks for chipping and covering against the weed invasion.

All the cloches are back in place at the very front of the vegetable bed.  From the bottom, two cloches of broad beans, one of last years swiss chard and lettuce, then the next is empty waiting for either salad or aubergines (I haven’t decided which) and the top cloche houses beetroot and radish, sprouting happily.

And oh look, here’s an exciting chore: we have dismantled the chestnut log fence between our boundary and the duck pond next door.  No need for it now that everything is so pristine behind the fence.  All I need to do is load up about seventeen wheelbarrow loads and place the nicely seasoned logs in the wood store.  Strap me up and let me at ‘em.