The bramble orchard

I am hiding from the heat. 1130am and the house is the only place to hide from this incessant blast of summer.

A litre of water, a cool cloth to the head and I am almost ready to head out again. In fact I would have kept it up an hour longer but I just couldn’t get the strimmer to start. It’s protesting the heat as much as my head.

It seems 730am to 930am is the only window of opportunity in which do to hot work. The sun gets up over Mont Godin around then and you have to change bandana for large hat.

But I have made progress: found a lost wall that was buried under a sea of brambles. I couldn’t strim the thing as it was so thick. Instead I had to take to it with large loppers.

And then raking the darn stuff down to the flat bit of the orchard was the next grueling task. When Nicolas heads off to lunch I will be able to sneak the wheelbarrow he is using and get all the mess into a neater pile. And that pile I think is going to be a new compost section. Hidden well behind the stables. But close enough that I might be able to make use of the compost in a year’s time.

It looks rather odd seeing the trees all on their lonesome down at the base of the slope. Makes one want to plant more. More soft fruit? More trees? Or just a wall of perfectly trained grasses.   Hmm, I can see the year’s planting stretching out ahead.

But at least all the while I was doing grunt work on a lower terrace I was comforted by the fact that creativity was happening elsewhere.

The new chestnut wall is almost complete. And it can even withstand a bit of bouncing when I plant up the grasses. Proof from the creator of the wall.

It is going to give a broader area to plant up the grasses and perhaps permit some room for gaura and other fun sun-loving plants. I know already (to the cost of the mini meadow experiment) that this is a dry area indeed.

But can’t think of creative stuff. Back to my toil.