Strimming day. Which can feel a bit like groundhog day when you have so much land to keep clear.  I am in denial about the very low terraces (and the vineyard) which are out of sight and out of mind.  But the rest require’s one’s attention, strimmer, protective headgear and audio book entertainment.

I plugged in Stephen Fry reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, pulled the starter chord and off I went.

I made my first batch of cherry jam.  It was drizzling yesterday and not really fun in the sun weather.  So I hauled out the ladder, donned my raincoat and went up a tree.  I needed at least two kilos of cherries for my first batch of jam, and didn’t have any trouble finding them.  The fruit is all over the trees on the first terrace just below the house.  This is the view from my office right now.  Trees in fruit. A lovely sight to behold.

And especially as these trees are actually accessible for the forager.  The cherries are actually a few days off perfectly ripe. But they were fine for jam.  So I collected, then pitted and finally turned them into tasty preserves.

Indoor activities were necessary as it was still raining: it was so bad and unexpected in fact that I had to tidy my office just for something to do.  And to avoid tidying the basement which is where I ought to direct my indoor nesting energies.  But I love this rain, and a morning of indoor work wasn’t such a bad thing, just unexpected. I don’t have the words ‘mooch indoors’ on my to do list.

As soon as the rain cleared it was out with the camera and snap away at the new arrivals.  The lavender is about to burst out in the lilac bed; emulating the mighty deutsia bush in the same area. This is the famous unscented member of the philadelphus family (oh sweet orange blossom where is they scent?) and now that it has been radically pruned I can tolerate it a bit more.

But having seen and smelt the gorgeous shrub at Leslie and Theo’s last week I was envious indeed.  In Sydney they use a native version of this wonderfully scented shrub as a hedging plant.  I’d love to do the same, but the poor plants would take one look at our long cold winters and turn up their roots.

My own troubled hedge is the verbena bonariensis one I have been trying to establish as a border to the vegetable bed. I lost heaps over the winter and had hurriedly planted out lots of little seedlings last week and hoped they wouldn’t perish and be parched.  No such fears.  If you squint you can just about make out the little seedlings among the taller plants.  And I was pleasantly surprised to discover they are lightly scented. Just. If the wind is in the right direction and you have your scent antenna finely tuned.

The other scent squib is the New Dawn rose collection I have.  Growing prettily on the wall behind the herb garden, and I even have roses as cuttings from two years back.  They look good, produce heaps of roses, but do not smell at all.  Not even in humid weather or early in the morning.  Thank goodness my Gertrude Jekylls do so well in the courtyard. Otherwise I would think I was jinxed.

By late afternoon the sun came out and warmed up the garden to such an extent I had to peel layers of fleeces and don a sunhat just to weed the cabbage bed.  The area is weed free, and plagued by a slightly reduced population of gendarme bugs which eat my brassica leaves, and mulched.  It only slows down the weeds, but is aesthetically pleasing.

And as I had a bit left over, I mulched the coriander and basil thicket that is growing beside the cabbages up in that quarter of the garden.  The coriander is dying to bolt. But I am pinching out the flowers daily and hope that I can keep them a bit longer. I do love coriander and cucumbers with chillis, sugar and vinegar. No. Wait a minute, I have no cucumbers.  Let them bolt with impunity; they will never be ready at the same time as the now late fruiting cucumbers. I will have to go the Thursday market and cheat.

Tonight I’m doing what the rest of the country is doing: watching France play against Mexico on the World Cup.  Well, I’m listening as it is played on the goggle box in the living room. I am ensconsed in my office doing a spot of tidying up.

This afternoon I finished the seedlings and rather went off the boil in the pretty flower department. Well, I staked the lilies in the planter next to the front door. They were drooping slightly and looking crooked.

But mainly I went at the vegetable garden, hammer and tongs. Or in my case, trowell and gloves.

The poor old beetroot bed is rather bald. I removed the radish rows to try and get some light into the beetroot seedlings. They are not thriving. And I have searched and searched, and cannot find anymore seeds to re-sow.  So this bed will have to stay bald a bit longer until I can get more up and germinating. And if that fails, I plant the dill and fennel here and give beetroot up as a bad thing.  I remember the first year that the deer ate all the seedings before they had a chance, and the second year they failed to germinate at all. Third year lucky?  We shall see.

What you can’t see in this second cloche is any daylight between the plants. Rows of lettuce and swiss chard all looking plump and lovely. Most of my evening meals comprise the prunings from this one tiny patch of land.  Last year the deer (and a visiting hare) did the pruning for me in this bed: we had so few swiss chard leaves that I rather went overboard in the sowing and growing department. Half way through the year already and I haven’t lost a crop to four legged pests. Yet.

I also decided to tidy up the edges of the broad beans and pea bed. Not out of any real guilt about the creeping weeds; more out of a quest to find my missing pair of scissors. I know I brought them down the first night to snip broad beans off their plants.  But I can’t for the life of me locate them now. Did I drop them on one of my forages between the peas?  You have to crouch somewhat to duck under the netting, and they may have dropped out of my pocket.   But a careful search, and munch of the peas as I went, didn’t reveal the missing kit.

Never mind. They will turn up. I even did my first turning of the compost bins wondering if I hadn’t accidently tipped them into the bins with a big bucket of weeds. But nothing turned up but big fat worms and lots of lovely compost.  It’s quite sporting hanging about the compost bins right now. The euphorbia hedge just above it is in full exploding seed mode.  So you feel you are in a slow motion rice bubbles bowl as you work. Snap, crackle, pop.

I had thought to lift the euphorbia seedlings that resulted from this activity last year. But remembered that it’s best to plant in October rather then try and nurse young transplanted euphorbias over the summer.  They don’t like summer watering, and they are protected under the canopy of huge parent euphorbia branches right now.  So I put it on the to do list and went back to weeding.

And here it is: a lovely potager all tidy and neat. An early finish tonight as I have a full strimming and hefty log work day tomorrow.  And I wanted to prune the thyme plants on the steps down to the garden before dinner.  I need something to do while I watch the footy.  And what could be better than laboriously stripping the tiny leaves off all the thyme plant prunings?

I have come indoors for tea. And scones, with home made jam and greek yoghurt. If it were England, it would be clotted cream.  But I find the rich yoghurt does just as well.  And is probably better for you.  But if you are chomping into scones slathered with jam, you aren’t really in a position to be virtuous.

But I feel virtuous about this morning’s work. Planting out hundreds and hundreds and little seedlings.  And the head count will continue when I surge back outdoors.

First up were the gaura seedlings that germinated well from the seeds I sowed a while back. (I could walk out and find the stick with name and date, but that would involve getting up and deserting this wonderful cup of tea.)  I have planted out 70 seedlings in the calabert bed that now contains lots of happy summer bulbs.  The tall Gaura lindheimeri at the back of the bed, and a different variety of slightly dwarfish gaura towards the front. And yes, the label would be useful here.

100 metres walk; the variety is called Summer Breeze, bought from Chiltern Seeds, sown 26th April.  Slightly cooler sip of tea.

With luck both plants will hit maturity this summer and shower me with little flowers and lots of swaying greenery.  All woven between the bulbs of peacock gladioli and nerines.  Well, that’s the plan.

Next was to try and find room for the hundreds (and I mean hundreds) of verbena bonariensis seedlings that are bursting out of their pots in the shed.  I have decided the terraces on the bank behind the potting shed will be where I have the little forest of these amazing plants.  And naturally that involved a spot of weeding first.

My plans are to eventually have the spaces between these banks filled with new soil (and a retaining wall of either stones or chestnut poles) and keep on drifting the plants up along the bank.  Right now things feel a bit rigid and dull.

And one of the best things about bonariensis is that they self sow.  Well, not as successfully as I would hope, and not as prolifically as in Andrew’s garden, but it gives me a chance for making extra plants.

So if they can survive the winter they will multiply and give me a good August interest up on that steep bank.

Well over an inch of rain in a week.  What wonderful news.  I drove up yesterday; abandoned everything and zoomed up to the rain gauge to check.  No wonder everything looks lush and weedy.

The sweet peas were all up and I simply had to get them into a vase before they went over and turned into peas.  Two lovely vases later I munched the real peas and thought about what to do next.

That’s what often happens on the first day back.  You dither.  So I decided to harvest as much veg as I could before those ominous black clouds overhead emptied more rain onto the garden.

Peas and broad beans. More peas than the beans which actually need about another week; preferably in some sunshine.  But I have enough to make a tasty meal along with salad which is bursting everywhere.

I know it’s mad, but I have actually decided to pick most of the peas in mangetout form rather than wait for the peas to develop.  I can rarely get the reward from waiting so long for the peas and then having to shell them. It always seems a waste of green shell – the podder always just crunches through them while they shell the peas.   So if I pick them young I can blanch them and then freeze them for later.  Next year I may plant just the mangetout variety.

Just before I left last week I found that there were the first few raspberries, so up I trudged through the weeds to the top vegetable bed. And goodness what a thicket of growth.

I hope there are tubers in among all that potato growth, it looks way too healthy.

But I won’t lift any until next week.  But I did collect a punnet (squishing down the top ones to make room) of lovely raspberries.  They aren’t in the best condition – more suited for raspberry cordial than eating with yoghurt for breakfast.  But I’ll keep my eye on the next crop so I can pick them while they are juicy.

The cabbages up here are looking very healthy and putting on quite a lot of growth.  More than the lower potager ones.  But the swiss chard up here seem a bit more puny.  But that’s gardening. I was actually concerned that all the brassicas up here would get parched from lack of watering. I tend to neglect this area as it’s such a faff to haul 200 metres of hose all the way up.  But the rain has sorted things beautifully. 

And speaking of beautiful; here are a few action shots of the lower vegetable beds. I never seem to stand back and admire the detail of the new paths and layouts as I am forever just diving in to eat peas and smell the flowers.

All the fluffy bits in between the onions and garlic are self sown cosmos plants. I have decided to leave them there as I will lift the onions soon and the quadrant will seem a little bare.

Actually I have started planning for this eventuality by dotting the quadrant with squash and pumpkin plants that I sowed last month.  Hopefully they won’t be found by marauders and will get up and growing to cover this area with great greenery and eventually veg.

And if that doesn’t work out I can just plant more flowers.  I have sunflowers sprouting like sprouts up in the potting shed and can make a crop of those instead.  I have also way too many basil seedlings – these too are going all over the beds in the hope that they will not be picked off by slugs. It really is tremendously damp around here.  Some are protected by plastic bottle cloches, but eventually they get too big and I imagine they are safe.

The first early Charlottes ought to be ready in this part of the vegetable garden next week.  And the tomatoes have survived their brutal beginnings and are actually starting to surge.  I have to keep pinching out the sideshoots almost daily now.  You can’t see them in the pictures as I am training sweet peas up the same stakes.

I sowed too many in spring and couldn’t bear to part with a single plant. So the excess were planted in this once bare patch of the garden.  And they will be well over before I have to start worrying about the tomatoes suffering from the overcrowding.

And just in front of the tomatoes are the cucumber frames. and one single solitary cucumber. Sad I know, but slugs at the dozen plants I had put out last month.  So in the meantime I popped in a few sunflowers to make use of the natty construction.  And they now threaten to overwhelm.  But the cucumber replacements I sowed didn’t come up and I have only now sown the new batch.  The sunflowers can enjoy their frolics here for ages yet.

The cabbages up in the top left quadrant of the vegetable bed are fine; but not stellar.  I need to give them a mighty weed and mulch this week. And kill more gendarmes.  Those are the pesky red beetles (always mating) that eat the leaves. I squish with impunity; but as the cabbages are well cloched against cabbage white butterfly it’s not easy thing to sneak up on the red beetles and  get them.  You tend to get yourself caught up in netting and give yourself away. No such thing as a sneaky approach. And you need it to catch them before they do into the defensive tuck and drop to the ground.

I’m flagging.  What else? The soft fruit area is still a few weeks behind last year’s harvest date, but getting closer.  The white currant is first up and out, and the red currants, although puny, are not far behind.

The blueberry bushes are still small, but bursting with almost ripe fruit. I think you could get one breakfast serving of fruit from these tiny bushes.  I really must move them this winter to a more convivial spot.  They were scorched by the sun last year.  And the single one behind the jostaberry bushes did not get pollinated.  I heard that you need two blueberries side by side for them to produce fruit. And even though the single blueberry is just two metres away, it looks forlornly bare of berries.

The wondrous jostaberries in between the blueberry bushes are still stubbornly green, so are a week at least off being edible. Being on the tart side already thanks to their gooseberry parentage, you don’t want to bite into one of these beauties green.

One thing that we can bite into now are the cherries. Hurrah, fruit on all the trees. And some of them aren’t even impossibly high to pick.  I think I shall make jam this week.

A pleasing sight at the end of a long early evening’s mow.  I started in the orchard, moved up the track, did the lawn at the end of the pool. Hauled the mighty machine over the decking, attacked the main lawn area and finished by doing the bit in front of the house where the plum trees lie.

No, I lie – I did more – the area in front of the east garden, the east garden itself and finished by zipping down the margins of the road and put the machine back into the stables for a well earned rest.

And that’s a rather spiffy idea. 930pm and I’m famished.

My kingdom for a cherry picker.  If only the fruit wasn’t so high.  I have christened our brand new ladder and reached dizzying heights; but it’s not high enough.  If someone came down the road with a cherry picking machine I would die happy.  Ah well, that’s the curse of unpruned trees. You take what you can reach.

Still, I have a good bucket’s worth from just a few trees. I suspect I will share them with Andrew who is visiting tomorrow. Not enough to make a batch of jam.  There is always a greed factor one must take into account. 

Right enough frivole – off to mow the lawns. Hayfever pill at the ready.

I’ve just come indoors to get my hat and have a cool drink.  The morning started out hazy and cool. But now, by mid morning, it’s heating up.

I have determined to get as many plants from the potting shed into the ground today.  And this may mean the seedlings are a bit small and not ready for the big potager and jostling crowds of roots.  This was inspired first by the cool seeming weather, but also because  I’m coming into a period where I will be away a week at a time.  And the seedlings won’t survive that long without a watering.

So this morning in went two cup and saucer plants (cobaea scandens) into the middle barrel in the potager.  These were then joined by two courgette zucchino plants.  They look shocked by the relocation, but I won’t panic for a day at least.

I have added five more squash plants to the onion bed: I’m hoping they won’t cause too much competition to the onion roots.  I’m scheduled to lift most of that bed at the end of June, so it will be a bare patch of ground soon.  Well, apart from the lovely parsnips and cleomes that are holding their own at the top of the bed.  And the weeds.

And once I am suitably hatted, I shall plant out a few more dozen verbena bonariensis in the ‘hedge’ at the end of the potager.

Quick pause there: Ulysse called and demanded attention.  I have my baby lawn mower on the lower terraces back at the moment. He had disgraced himself by escaping from Jean Daniel’s last week and after a long search he found him (I didn’t ask where) and just plonked him our our terrace.  Being put on the naughty steppe if you will.  He can be sure that he won’t escape here as the perimeter is well sorted.  And I spoil him with a daily apple. Who said horses aren’t smart?  But to hear him whinny I wondered if he was planning another escape.  But just a lively whinny.  So I have added more water to his bucket and fed him and he is off to eat another terrace worth of grass.

Walking up to the shed I noticed – horrors – a lily beetle on one of the lilies that has grown again from last year’s bulb.  I managed to squish it using the usual technique of cupping your hand under the leaf before you reach for the beetle. They drop to the ground and play possum when you approach.  But this has meant I lost (or is it gained?) about twenty minutes searching out each and every other lily plant in the area and making sure they were beetle free.  So far so good.

And now I’m off to weed the area behind the terraces on the potting shed bank.  I have strimmed as much as I could; but there are little oak seedlings that need (ahem) attending to. And I apologise in advance to our friend Fenning who loves his oak seedlings and would be appalled.  But this is a flower garden.  And I have just planted over sixty verbena bonariensis seedlings here. Not to mention fifteen eragrostis curvula plants.  I want to test and see if the mighty eragrostis can cope with light shade.

I didn’t manage much in the green and gardening line today. Unless you count raking strimmings. No, I was up a ladder up on the roof.

Dario came over to replace broken tiles. We have a leak in the guest house and it needed tending to before we launch into new flooring.  And with this very cold hard winter tiles have been a breaking. It’s not the top ones that count – but the ones underneath. And you don’t really know what’s broken unless you lift the lot and have a peek.

Heaps of broken tiles came off and heaps went back on. Hot work in the sun, but luckily I didn’t have to do the worst of the creeping about the roof.

For an encore Dario also replaced a wheelbarrow load of tiles from the roof above the bread oven.

I just had time to do a quick watering of the orchard trees and collect a punnet of strawberries for dessert; and a meal of peas, broad beans, swiss chard and salad.

I do love a plant that doesn’t go quietly.  I was having an early evening strim (wish it was a swim) doing all the edges.  Up at Jean Daniel’s road, all along the bits of the chestnut steps, down the back near the car parking and down to the first terrace below the house.

I’m nursing the last bits of motor mix until I can stock up again on Saturday, so I thought it best to wade into the nettle patches that are about the slopes. In I went all strimmer blades whirring and out I came five minutes later prettily covered – and I mean covered – in green goo.  Juicy nettles make for a very messy shirt, trousers, face protector and head.

I am going to hang up the strimmer, retrieve my empty can of petrol/oil that is up at the top of the property and go and immerse myself in water.  The white shirt will have to soak.