A change of valves and pipes and we have left the world of town water and bills behind; and will now be on spring water until (hopefully) next summer.  It always feels like a momentous event. As if you are getting back in touch with the mountain in a very direct way.

Our tank up on the hillside is already half full.  Not bad for August when the spring used to dry up completely.  But now, thanks the elaborate and very professional work of capping the source this month, we seem to have three little springs close by that drip into the tank.

Naturally the first thing I did to celebrate this fact was to spend an hour and a half watering the vegetable garden, the soft fruit, the grasses and anything else I spied from the end of my long hose. It’s marvellous fun; especially as there is a feeling of almost autumn in the air (only 22C so far today) and the belief that nature might just take over this watering chore from me any day now.

In the meantime I am working through my list: potting up the strawberry runners.  Heaps of little runers here and I went down with twenty pots to capture them. In a month or so I can sever the runners from their parent and find space for them.

I also waded into the area below the plum trees and tried to cut down most of the suckers that have sprouted from these trees to the ground.  I’ve never seen so many suckers from a tree before.  Well, the sycamores in my parents in law’s Scottish garden perhaps comes to mind.  But I have to try and catch them now before they turn into trees.  This bank needs work. And ideas. To my surprise and delight one of the little teensy olive trees is fruiting.  But I have to come up with something esle to cover all the weeds and detritis. It’s rather good soil as most of the last terraces in the group down a mountain are.  So perhaps I could come up with something over the winter.

Time for tea and something to put on all my stinging nettle attacks. Pruning and cutting back:  it’s never fun.

I never did get round to the coriander. I sat in my office on the rug and wrote out jam labels instead. It seemed to take most of the afternoon.

But the work is almost done.  All I need to do is tie on the labels and work out how to get them to the Christmas Fair in London in December. I take a dozen back each trip, but there are 91 jams and five large jars of aubergine / eggplant pickle to carry.  Goodness it looks like a glut.

I tended to another glut here today.  Basil. It has had a major end of summer haircut and is now languishing in the freezer in the form of pesto.  I get the feeling that I overdid the garlic somewhat in the blend.  Or maybe it’s because the cloves are so fresh here’ but the lunch of pasta with home made pesto and fresh green beans does linger somewhat.  Good thing I’m going to gorge on pizza tonight at the local restaurant and layer the garlic experience.

I’ve just come in from a quick session with the mower. A machine I don’t think I have used for at least three weeks. But the road was getting a little scruffy down past the house and towards the entrance to the drive, so I thought I’d give it a quick tidy.

The reason for this unexpected August activity was that we woke up this morning to the astonishing sight of grey clouds. Why, we even managed a bit of a dizzle which was exciting.  I went up and hauled all my seedlings out of the shade, pricked out and potted on some sage seedlings.  And then contemplated climbing into the harness and actually having a good session with the strimmer.

But it’s now 11am and the sky is cloudless and the sun is blazing again.  So I shall have to rethink my chores.  Potting up strawberry runners whilst hiding under a very wide brimmed hat might be more of the thing.

Full of vim I have done five loads of compost before breakfast.  Not for any virtuous need to get a lot done in the day: rather it’s going to be too hot to attempt this hot sweaty task later.

I do wish I had asked for help from the lovely nephews last week. It’s hard work hauling the compost out of the bins and wheeling it all the way up to the top of the property.  But it will be well worth it when I want to plant up these banks in the autumn.

The soil that Nicolas used to fill the bank is fine; but thin.  And if I am to invest in some Filippi nursery plants later, they need a good start in life.  So each wheelbarrow load has to be considered a jolly good thing rather than a heavy juggernaut that wants to shudder and tumble down the terrace slopes before I’ve managed to shovel out the entire load.

Before going in for breakfast I moved all the seedlings into the shade. I sowed the clary sage from Leslie just last week. And now, suddenly, they have germinated, and are up in their pots and fighting for space.

So I have carefully pricked them and hope I don’t have a sea of the little critters before the end of the week.  I have pricked out 80 already.

The heat has returned. 32C today and just as warm yesterday. It’s more the weather for hiding indoors and marvelling at our wonderful cool thick walls.  But there is an hour and a half in the morning when you can get things done.

I have watered lavishly; and picked beans galore. We are moving into the kilo or so every two days and you cannot stop.  So I’m going to be looking to freeze some of this glut, when we tire of eating such delicious veg.

I also took time to pick blackberries, zucchetti, herbs and ate a breakfast of baby tomatoes straight off the vine.

But the biggest glut in the garden right now is the humble cosmos. I am hacking it back and filling every vase.  The plants are crowding the pumpkin and onions and garlic and even I am tiring of them.

But they are fetching and do well in the vases. But I have sown lots more flower seeds this week to try and add a bit more variety to the house.

I can’t seem to settle to any task.  Maybe it’s because having so many house guests means that there’s just only a few hours in between large meals.  Or even more pertinent, house guests are more fun than settling down and doing work.

Or it’s the old shed pre-occupation. I spent a good part of yesterday afternoon (supposed to be in my office working) drawing up a scaled plan of how I want the new potting shed to look. Windows galore, decking round the edges, places for cold frames on the south side. Too exciting. And as it’s only a dream as I can’t rustle up a willing carpenter, that’s how it stays. And I stay stuck on how I want the interior to look – a properly designed area for potting up. Storage. A slight slope to all the benches so that when I water I can collect the run off rather than having it all over the floor.  Endless possiblities. And all the while those mighty red poultry mites still find the perfect nesting location for their nefarious deeds. Me.

But in between itching and scratching and day dreaming, I have managed to move eight wheelbarrow loads of soil onto the newly weeded calabert bed. The soil was left over from the bulldozer work up at the top of the guest house.  And having weeded this bed, I know how thin the soil is.  So in the glorious afternoon heat I plodded up and came back and felt very pleased indeed.

Oh, and planted fifteen eragrostis grasses here too.  They were languishing in pots and weren’t doing any good there. So I have placed half as a row in the vegetable garden as a sort of nursery bed for the rest of the year. And some here in the calabert garden.  They can get their roots down and put on some growth before I left them next spring in their final place.  That’s the bank above the pool, that has pennisetum bald patches.

Well it’s a bit of a pattern. I can squeeze in about an hour or two of gardening in the morning, but that’s it. House guests galore, meals galore and I’m trying to work on the paid job in the afternoon.  Fear not, if you are reading this John, the film project is coming along nicely!

I’ve been preoccupied about flowers of late. And plants in general. Greed and the need to clothe parts of this garden with colour.  So I’ve been propagating most mornings.  Yesterday I took a few dozen nepeta cuttings, sowed clary sage seeds and today I’ll try and get more gaura to propagate.  And maybe more santolina?  I have around twenty titchy little cuttings that came through – but I just don’t know how vigorously they grow.  In quiet moments I click onto the Pepinere Filippi website and drool.

Wildflower gardens: you only see them in their glory. This is the downside of such exhubertant unchecked growth. It has taken me two days and three towering wheelbarrow loads of compost matter to get this teensy bit of garden tamed.  Well, it’s six metres long; but not really a large volume of space.  And I guess you could say it’s tedious work as I insist on collecting all the seed.

There were cornflowers and poppies and all sorts of goodies in here. And now I’m left with just a few peacock orchids (oh, alright, acidanthera murielae) and even they aren’t flowering. I need more plants. I need to learn about proper successional sowing. I need more time!

One side has too many bulbs and the waving drifts of gaura that I sowed this spring and planted out hhasn’t quite knitted in yet. The nerines are titchy and may not even come up, and I yearn for crocosmia lucifer just to wow this part of the garden up.  What to do? Drink my tea, stop moaning and go and read a book. Preferably a gardening one that will teach me how to do this properly.

Well, it’s still raining, so I am forced indoors to sort pictures and talk cosmos.  A glut of flowers is no bad thing; but these ones are a touch out of control. I never expected them to self seed so successfully.  So I let everything in the vegetable garden go.  You can barely see the onions and garlic for the blighters.

But they lift the spirits and make for very simple flower arrangements all over the houses.

Months later, well month later, I am back up at the top vegetable plot and digging potatoes. This was the last row of Pink Fir Apples that I had completely ignored. Well, moved it so far down the gardening list that it dropped off the summer to do list page.

The weather right now is cool and perfect for grappling in the dirt and hunting spuds. I can’t say it’s a bumper harvest. So it is yet another  lesson to try and learn – don’t plant Scottish potato varieties in the south of France. We’ll have to gorge on the reliable Charlotte and Ratte next year.

Pause there. I’ve just done two loads of luandry and it has started to rain. Is it a passing shower or settling in for the duration? My garden heart says bring it on. My domestic inner goddess is shrieking with frustration and vex.