I love gardening: you can learn new things every week. Take this for example; I cut out all the dying sweet pea plants from the bean poles last week. And without thinking just dumped them on the bark chip path in the middle of the potager.  A huge pile of drying plant and seed and naturally I have only come back to them this morning. What do I find? Seeds scattered in among the bark chips and utterly unfindable.

So it’s all a learning curve; and next year I’m going to cut out the stalks and leave them on a white sheet to dry.  But I do have hundreds and hundreds of seeds, despite my neglect, so all is not lost. I guess I’ll just have whacky seedlings in the middle of the path.

I mowed for the first time in about a month this morning too. That was fun now that I have proper ear protectors. And nothing beats listening to Gardener’s Question Time on the mp3 as you roar up the track cutting back on the knee high weeds.

I’m just back in from clearing a path in the forest: it’s the one that links our house and the first house 300 metres down the mountain, le Buisson.  It’s also the path that our neighbour Jean Daniel uses for his horse riding.  And boy were there brambles. And creeping Spanish broom, and small oak trees in the path. So I took a stout pair of loppers and launched in.

An hour later I’m back with a happy, sweaty smile and two wasp stings. I must have wandered close to a nest and the wasps went straight for the gap between my hand and the leather gloves. Ouch.

It didn’t sting for too long, but I am about to launch into some anti histamines as my hand is quite sore.

But the other news on the path front is the one that Nicolas made yesterday. Swift and chic work. This is the new little path that sits above the gite and leads to a new secret garden above the road. A sloping terrace with all sorts of possibilities. Especially now we can reach it without having to trek to the top of the property and slither down the other side.

And how about this for a great day’s work?  The new terrace bank is complete. Enormous logs brought down, pegs whittled and hammered in (sometimes bashing through the rocks underneath). And soil added.  I’m just itching to draw up a plan and see what needs to go where. More sedums, more grasses, lots more flowers for the future.  I can’t wait. But first I’d best get chipping so I can cover these newly created beds and prevent weeds. I’m not ready yet.

Five pm and I’m flagging. It must be about 99 per cent humidity here today, and around 28C.  Not the best weather for charging about.  But that is what I seem to be doing. Lots of people here doing electrics, digging trenches for new outdoor sink, and gardening.

Well beefy gardening. The landscaping sort. I need to move the large collection of soil that was left over after Gilles’ heroic efforts above the gite.  And to move it, I decided to move up the winter project of adding more terraces to the bank above the potting shed.

The little thin beds we made last year (or was it the year before?) are well settled. The calamagrostis Karl Foerester are fine and thriving, and the echinacea purpuruea Magnus have survived the worst of winter and the driest of summers.  So they are a plant to stay and expand. The eupatorium purpureum isn’t as happy. The poor plants look a touch thin and straggly.  And won’t last in the new re-design I suspect.  But there are sedums, valerian, antirrhinums, achilleas, eragrostis, some cosmos and lots of verbena bonariensis crammed into the thin beds.  Now it’s time to expand.

But to do that Nicolas had to collect the long logs from the forest, and I needed to dig over the soil. And boy does it look poor. Dry and pale and undernourished. I don’t dare plant anything here until I’ve well manured and tended and nurtured.

But speaking of nurturing; here’s a success. I took cuttings from the santolina, the lavender, the gaura and the sarriette (a sort of thyme) in the spring.  Struck them in pots of gritty compost, covered them with plastic bags and then stuck them away in the potting shed under the tables.  And would you believe they actually worked. They usually die on me as I insist on trying to keep them alive over the long winter.

But today I was almost humming a happy tune as I potted them on and admired the future plants. It almost makes me want to do more. But instead it’s builders’ mate work instead. Ah well, there’s always tomorrow for more.

At long last I have found them. I was watering the basil in the potager and there they were: secateurs hiding in among the carrots. They are a teesny bit rusty from an enforced five days in the open, but at long last I can keep up with my list.

I’ll have to clean and sharpen them first. And then launch in. Well, in between loads of laundry in the guest house.  But it’s a sunny day and I have time.

I did a quick lap up to the potting shed first thing to see if the storm last night yielded any rain. None; but it did give me pause to enjoy my lovely summer bulbs in the calabert garden en route.

Then to water the cabbage right up at the top of the vegetable bed, a brief dousing everywhere else, and then on to the mirabelles.

They are dropping like mad and sending the wasps just as mad with all the  sugar and juice. I’ve already made 21 small pots of jam from the first harvest.  But what to do with the rest? I was thinking of following Jean’s great idea of stewing them, mashing them and then turning them into a fruit sorbet.  But first they have to be picked.  So down with the dust sheets and tarps and that way I can catch most before they roll down into the garden near the pool.

It’s one of those before and after shots where you can’t really see the difference.  Pruning wisteria. The lovely plant is just too invasive for its stupendous month of glory.  But it keeps the cellars cool under the house and provides a bit of shade and shape to that part of the property.

But it will insist on growing up into the gutters.  Our ladder only extends 12 feet and that felt high enough with a huge pair of loppers.

But we have made inroads, and hopefully by cutting off the power supply to the branches above the guttering they may just die and be more easily pulled out in the autumn.

If we get time.  That’s the challenge right now. I can see so many parts of the garden that require my time.  And curses, I have mislaid not one but two pairs of my secateurs.  Which means any spontaneous pruning just isn’t taking place.  Losing secateurs in the garden? Does that mean I can call myself a real gardener now?

Now that’s more like it. Three kilos of ripe plums off the tree and 21 pots of plum jam in the pantry.  Well, I don’t have a pantry, but the jam pot volume is ever increasing.  I didn’t manage any other garden task today. Twas into the office, head down and make progress on the screen play.  Oh yes, and entertain guests, help install a cooker hood, plan for the next task (outdoor sink and table in the bread oven which also requires trench digging and pipe laying) and generally have a lovely day.

Next up a mighty batch of broad bean, pea and parsley risotto.

Ah, at long, long last. The house renovations are complete. The five guests are in, and the month long serious toil of getting a barn turned into a home is over.

Which means that I can actually turn to the garden again. I have neglected it (and this blog) for too long.  My first start was to go up to the rain gauge and have a look. Half an inch. Fabulous. We had that wonderful thunder and lightning show last night – complete with the electrics tripping out and cooking by candlelight.  And rain.  So it looks as if the garden and I have started from a great point.

The soil is soft so I can plant all those poor things that have been languishing in pots. And plant myself into the middle of the potager and weed, weed, weed.

Hours later I can’t say I achieved a lot. It feels like holiday fever. Not able to settle.  But I have planted out the aquilegias up under the mirabelles.  And as a bonus, eaten a few of those plums too.  Everything is coming into ripeness.

There are dark plums for the first time in quantity on the three trees just in front of the house. They had a radical prune two years ago, and it has paid off.  Naturally it’s going to be a challenge to pick them as they are hanging over a steep slope. But no pain,  no gain; I’ll put the task on my to do list tomorrow.  And what a treat to write ‘pick plums’ rather than find tubing for cooker hood, buy mastic for windows, and buy more paint.

I have planted out half a dozen rocket seedlings in the big barrel at the bottom of the herb garden.  They should be protected under the leaves of the Italian zucchini plants. They are fruiting. But sporadically.

Next up (along with entertaining a visiting eight year old house guest) was to weed the beans for the first time. I am trying to weed out the dying and dried sweet pea beans at the same time; I want to keep the seeds for next year. But it’s a bit of a lottery – you don’t want to pull out the productive bean as you yank on a dying sweet pea tendril.  But this isn’t a bad start.