Pimp my pool bank

My lovely friend Andrew came up with a very pithy phrase for what he does.   Part of his job as a flower grower and designer is to make rich people’s gardens look brilliant in the few months they come to their summer houses in the southern Ardeche.   One of them (his main client) has a decorative vegetable and flower garden which we call a potager.

So there are days when he is hauling ready to go veg and flowers into these spaces and announcing that he is ‘pimping the potager’.

It’s the phrase that came to mind with my morning’s task. I’m pimping the pool bank. After yesterday’s building work, now I’m cheating by adding thyme plants. In flower, very large and very stolen.

I have nicked them from the rocks and paths of the top terrace up near the forest.

We have lots of house guests arriving from Friday; so I couldn’t leave them with this major vista of bare earth around the pool. There are a few thyme plants already established here. And they are perfect as the soil is rather thin over the granite rock. So a rockery it is to be.   And I can only countenance the idea of thyme plants: aromatic, attractive, ground covering, attracting bees, pink in flower. Oh yes, and free.  

So I guess that I will spend the rest of the morning digging, transplanting and hoping no one will notice the rather potemkin effect.

Pink is the theme up at the water source. I walked up to check that we still have a flowing spring.   I watered a lot of the shrubs last night and was curious that this great month’s rain has had an effect on the underground springs. Yep. A trickle but steady.   And I love to gawp at one of my most successful wildflower sowings. Pretty pink, and so much better than bare earth and weeds.

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The morning? I spent all day, and have a few more hours to go. But by goodness this is satisfying work.   And I added a dozen more eragrostis babies along one ribbon of the terrace.   Light rain please, no heavy downpours. The soil is too unstable for a torrent.