Sinuous landscaping

This is the job I have been doing while waiting for the Presidential election count. Like many of you this week, I have decided to do something strenuous and involving. And away from my computer screens.

And believe me when I say I have yearned to do this bit of landscaping for a very long time.

This rock pile has been here in front of the house since December.

It has grown. It has caused no end of challenges trying to get past them on the way to the potager. Uphill, trip hazards. Unsightly.

You might have spotted the cafetière on the pile. That was the sweetener for Nicolas.

He thought he was making a low sinuous wall that would link the main one in front of the house with the new extension.

He did it beautifully.

But these were all the stones left over.

(I was pleased to get rid of the last chestnut beam hanging about the courtyard. That became the top of the new garden bed.)

So at the end of a long, but thankfully warm sunny day, he agreed to make a new low wall below this terrace and hide all these holy terrors.

And at last, at long last, I could landscape the whole area.

See that smooth expanse of dirt? That was a rubble field.

I raked, I picked out stones, I hoarded bucket upon bucket of the good soil for the raised beds. I found a cache of gravel under a tarp.

I laboured.

I stood back with an aching back and a big smile.

And then raced upstairs to the new extension to look down on the project from above.

Yes. Feels great. I will be transplanting euphorbias and nepeta to fill out the bed. It is crying out for more lavenders, but I am so disenchanted with the the scraggly look of these mediterranean shrubs I might wait a bit for those.

Meantime I am just delighted with dirt. We can’t sow grass seed because the ants steal all the seeds. So I will have to sow the trays of grass in the potting shed again.

Okay, now I can go back to refreshing my browser and checking on the vote.