There was not much time for work in the garden today: we had a firewood project instead.  Lobbing logs in the forest down to the road, putting them in the boot of the car and stacking them in the calabert.

But I did manage to sneak out to the garden and finish digging up the rest of the plants.  It looks poised and ready for the off.

A new project: a new wall.  This is something I have been plotting for ages. And now it’s about to begin.  This is the bed that separates the lawn from the vegetable garden. And it has always needed a bit of oomph. it lacks drama.

So stage one was to get out all the plants. To my surprise it has taken all day.

I am going to be recycling most of them, so I had to prepare a place in the now cleared vegetable garden. The verbena bonariensis plants came out first.  And then the stipas which were to go to the lilac bed, and finally the euphorbias and the catmint.

I also found quite a lot of little verbena hastata plants hiding in the thicket of the rest.  Those are now in pots in the potting shed.  And a good place for them too.

I had a little helper watching on.  The catmint is naturally one of Artur’s favourites.  He can sniff and roll in the sharply odoured plant for ages each day.  So he looked a bit concerned as the huge clumps came up, went into the wheelbarrow and were then banished to a lost corner of the garden.

He tested them out as soon as they were heeled in and looked mightily relieved. Or was that the drug in the leaves?

I was suprised just how many rocks there are already in the bed.  Some huge boulders in fact. And a lot buried just below the surface.  I grubbed out as many of the small ones as I could, and I have left the heavy ones for Monday.

By the end of the day it looked a mess. But I can see that a few more hours work and I should have a blank canvas.

Ah, this autumn is really glorious.  I have been meaning to photograph the lovely mulberry trees for days.  And this afternoon I finally managed to be in the garden rather than merely driving past it.

The one in the courtyard is just at fetching. Except for some strange white growth – a fungus? a mildew? a dread disease – on many of the limbs. You can’t see it when the leaves are on, but now that it’s ‘fall’ you can see the unhealthy state of the branches.  I’ll post a picture for fun. 

But I must consult Nicolas when he comes on Monday. I suspect he will suggest I do what all Ardeche farmers do. Just spray it with Bordeaux Mixture, that’s the cure all for all things agricultural.  They love it.  It’s copper sulphate. The darling of vines, wines, fruit crops and just about everything else.

Actually I did use it a bit once I found a brand that was colourless and not glaring blue.  But I’ve decided to let my plants try and cope for themselves these days.  The vines in the courtyard always get some blistering mystery affliction, but I think the attack is growing less dramatic as the years pass.

Maybe the courtyard mulberry will be the same. But it is certainly spreading.

The garden didn’t get a look in today as we were off on our annual wine buying adventure.  Our destination was an hour and a half north of us on the Rhone river.  The famed Cote Rotie.  A teensy village and a teensy patch of land which insists on making amazing wine. Shiraz only – Syrah to you – and it is incredible.

But I tend to be a little sceptical about monocultures. You needed to have been in Tajikistan in the early nineties to understand that one.  They only grew one crop – cotton – and when the empire collapsed they had nothing to live on.  The soil was exhausted, they were pumping fertilizers onto the land to keep up absurd Soviet quotas.  And when the Soviets stopped coming, the fuel for the tractors stopped flowing and the fertilizer couldn’t be bought the country became a dustbowl.  And I mean a dustbowl.  And with farmers trained and collective farms only equiped for one crop, their lives crumbled.

I wish I didn’t have these flashes as we cruised up the valley by St Peray, Cornas, Tain, Mauves and eventually with a bit of sneaky motorway driving, Ampuis.  But I did.  Vines clinging to the hillsides all the way are quite a feat of engineering and dexterity. I thought planting my grasses on my steep banks were a challenge. But I bet they use climbing harnesses to prune some of those steeply planted vines.

Still. As you can see, the sun shone and we ate well and we even managed to get back home and go for a long lope in the forest to work off lunch and a day of inactivity.

We found a new bit of the forest today which was a thrill. You can see how neglected it is.  Here a douglas fir (Scotch pine) is growing so close to an oak and fighting for sun and light that they seem to have locked branches.

Work is definitely needed here.  And we have lots of cutting back to do.  Now some people see box hedging and think of neatly manicured small plants neatly in rows and preferably framing a garden bed.

For us, this is our box hedging.  Previous centuries they used to plant the box on top of the stone walls.  Or if I think about it, just cleared away the ubiquitous plant from areas either side of the walls they built.  That way they could see the boundaries easily from afar; just follow the box forest.   The box we have is over fifteen feet high, and dense as a forest. We clear as much as we can. But we will never win.  It has never been shaped or pruned. Just allowed to do its thing.

The only revenge you can have against such a thicket is to think of all the practical implements you could make. Apparently box is the best wood for lead pencils. Where’s my chain saw?

Too civilized. We have taken to having a proper apartif now: nuts and olives on a beautiful wooden tray, cleansing ales. Glass of white wine.  This is the life.  And I can almost, but not quite say, that I’ve earned it today.

I have finally planted out the eragrostis grasses in the steep bank above the pool.  I didn’t launch in straght away of course. I first had to nip up to Vernoux and get a tyre changing lesson from our lovely local garage.

We arrived on Saturday afternoon to find our car had a flat at the train station. And naturally it was pouring rain when we had a go at changing it. So today when I went up to collect the repaired tyre, M. Marton showed me the best way to get a flat tyre off. Forget undoing the nuts with a deft twist. He recommended you stand up and stamp on the wrench and give it some welly.  Marvellous.  That looks like something I would enjoy doing.

And I had to stock up on butchery while I was in town.  But as soon as I was back it was out with the ladder and the plants and on with mass planting.

I counted out the pots at the end of the session: 72.  You can’t see them in this shot. And quite frankly, you can’t see them on the bank either.  This huge expanse just swallows small plants.  But the ground was moist and this is my best chance of getting these little critters established. I crammed them in.

In spring I will dig up the large eragrostis beasts in the calabert garden and plonk them in the gaps.

I shan’t post yet another picture of the cat. This is supposed to be a gardening blog after all.  But the good news is Artur has forgiven me.  He hasn’t come out from under the table very much.  But he did seek me out in the garden where I was working on draining the pool and demanded to have his head scratched and be stroked.  That’s a relief.

If he only knew what a lovely roaring fire we have indoors he would be in like a shot.  We had drinks up at his owners house last night and I was pleased to see that he gets his very own chair right next to their stove.   Jean Daniel was called out twice in the night to attend to fallen trees during the storm.  No airs and graces for deputy mayors.  Have chain saw, will clear roads seems to be the motto.  Even at midnight in a howling gale.

Today was a beautiful autumn day.  It really is too mild for a fire, but it’s so fun having a good one at long last that we couldn’t resist.  I didn’t quite get round to the grasses, but seemed to spend ages picking up chestnut burrs and working on my compost heap.

This one is behind my potting shed and I really need to stop adding to it and let it start to rot down in peace.  It’s too big to turn so it will have to be a static heap.  I have excavated an area beside the heap for this autumns’ prunings.  And try not to be lazy and dump yet more chestnut leaves and burrs on top of the current one.

I had a companion briefly during my toils.  Ulysse has escaped yet again.  He was getting stuck into the pears that had fallen down near one of Jean Daniel’s trees. And bless me if he didn’t discover that the current on the electric fence was off.  One quick visit to me to see if I had any apples. I didn’t. And he was off down the road at a quick gallop to visit his friends.  The seasons may change but some things stay the same.

The vegetable bed was my next port of call (after calling Jean Daniel to alert him to the sneaky stallion’s escape number 623) was the lower vegetable bed.  Would you believe that I still have fresh tomatoes on the plants? Ripe red fruit still going strong. They went into a salad pretty smartly, and I even dug up some mighty parsnips for dinner.  I have tried to give you an idea of the scale.  They are huge.  And delicious.  Perfect winter warming veg.  Except it’s not winter.  Tomorrow I must do the grasses.

Day two and we still aren’t on speaking terms. Oh dear.  But at least he is following me about.  Better than guarding the entrance to His Potting Shed and not letting me in.

It was still drizzling today so I thought it an idea to have a busman’s holiday. For the past three weeks I have been painting our new apartment in London. So what did I decide to do?  Finish all the walls and beam in the shed.

Mad. But it really does look odd having some marine ply walls in all their brown glory, some white walls and others a shade of soft green.  So out came the paint pots, away went Artur under the table and off I went.

It only took half a day and I didn’t even get too much paint on my clothes. Which is a relief as I had left my painting trousers and shirt in London. I’ll need to do lots of patchings after the furniture removals and deliverers do their stuff next Friday.

And after that I seemed to dither. I have a lot to do over the next week or so, but all I seemed to manage today was to cut down the asparagus fronds in the top vegetable bed.  They are a wonderful vivid yellow right now and it’s almost a shame to see them go.  But cut back they must be.  And I mulched the stalks and the entire row with a rather lovely pile of mulch from a makeshift bed up in the potager.

I had quite given up hope of these compost bins producing any good muck. They are forever dry and parched.  But somehow, after I pulled away a few feet of dessicated stalks, I found some good crumbly black gold underneath.

Tomorrow I must plant those eragrostis.  And get gardening for real.  Pruning just doesn’t feel like real work.

Goodness it’s been so long since I’ve written I’ve forgotten how. And forgotten that it’s a daily habit that must be fitted in.

We are back in France and life is almost returning to normal.  There were huge storms and very heavy rain for an entire week while we were away.  I had been following it on the French weather sites, and getting exciting emails from Andrew about the 14 inches of rain. Ugh.  We haven’t heard of anyone who hasn’t had a bucket under a leak of some sort under their roofs.

And we were no different. The guesthouse was a bit of a leaky sieve. And the main house even surprised us with some damage.  But it might just have been driving rain (almost 100km per hour) pushing into the chimney.  Quickly mopped up; thank goodness for tiled floors.

The garden is sodden.  But it’s so free draining that it won’t stay wet for long. I’m yearning to find out just how much rain we had; but my rain gauge is safely indoors away from any frost. And I forgot to ask Claude our neighbour who keeps track.

My potting shed was awash.  And when I looked for Artur he emerged from underneath the staging. Well hidden from the storms and rain by nesting in a bag of fleece well out of sight.

He picked his way delicately out of his hiding spot.  But I don’t know why. It was only to glare at me.  Ah, I do love their joyous reunions.

Actually for most of the first afternoon his main job seemed to be to get in my way.  I needed to put back all the plants that had been in the calabert. So he positioned himself in the doorway just where I would almost trip him up with my boxes of plants.  Who says cats aren’t clever.  I predict I get another day of punishment before we are friends.

There wasn’t much time for more than that on the first day back. It is getting dark around 530pm so just a few hours and suddenly it was gloom and dark.

But I did notice that the guard from the apple tree on the main lawn was no where to be seen. Goodness only knows how far it has blown.  The tree looked oddly naked without its protective fencing. I do wish we didn’t have deer in the forest that think apple branches a delicacy. Ah well. A small niggle. It’s just so lovely to be back.

Is this the last of the year?  Trudging back and forth from the potting shed to the calabert to keep the precious plants safe.

Most of these boxes contain propagating plants.  Will they survive? I have no idea. I had a check on some of the cistus and centranthus and they were just putting out teensy roots. So it would be shame if all the work of the last month would go to waste. But that’s part time gardening. I could hardly haul them back on the train to London.

And the potting shed is spookily clear. Just one confused cat who doesn’t know how boring life will be in the next few weeks. He might be forced to sleep 15 hours a day instead.

I’ve moved some of the plants to the north side of the potting shed. And potted on some heathers and the salvia and passionflower. Just to give them a better chance.  There is a bit of rain predicted next week; and some grey skies.

But I almost spluttered over my pot of breakfast tea when looking at the seven day forecast. A frost on one of next week’s nights. Argh. I haven’t factored that one in!  I’ll have to move the kangaroo paw somewhere more sheltered.

Still, despite all of this to-ing and fro-ing I still have time to admire some of the fantastic autumn colours in the garden.  The miscanthus hedge is glowing in the afternoon light.

But like all gardeners I just focus on the gap rather than the ten feet high grasses on the right. That’s another thing to add for the winter list.  I need to transplant some larger grasses elsewhere on the farm and add to this hedge.  And do I double the hedge? Or leave it single row?

And for those of you on eragrostis in the driest bank on earth watch. I watered. Carefully but well.

Being a Thursday this was market day in our scruffy but endearing agricultural town.  And that meant finding a bouquet of flowers for the stall holder Madame Orisette.  But the cupboard is almost bare. I think this will be the last of the cosmos flowers in the garden.  And I have added some verbena bonariensis blossoms as well, just to bulk it out.

It is blustery and cloudy today; a mistral is blowing down the Rhone valley and it has even touched us here on our snug mountain.  Mont Godin protects us from the worst of the wind but it does mean that there were chestnut burrs to watch out for as they plummet from the trees, and a sun hat to try and keep on one’s head.

I decided to finish the weeding of the vegetable garden. Putting it to bed for the year if you like.  There wasn’t much to do.  Just hoeing and a light weeding and removal of the spent sunflowers.

But I do have quite a few things left despite the vast tracts of bare earth. Runner beans (no surprise there), swiss chard, tomatoes, basil, parsley, marjoram, a few coriander seedlings and yet more tomatoes.  So that’s not bad.

And now I can concentrate on other parts of the garden.

One of the biggest joys this autumn has been collecting seeds. I have been haunting the shrubs in the calabert garden with pockets full of envelopes and a beady eye for seeds.

So far today I’ve collected a haul of gaura, ballota, bupleurum fruticosum, caryopteris and valerian seeds.  The ballota is fast becoming one of my favourite plants. It’s outrageously tactile and fluffy.  I must try and find a way to make more. Seeds were very hard to find in the flowers, and I am not sure if the cuttings will take.  But I think I have all the bases covered for now.