What is missing from this picture?

Me.   Poor Artur.   I came into the potting shed after a morning in Vernoux.   I had thought to do a spot of lavender destalking. Instead I found myself sitting on a chaise longue positively pinioned by a purring happy cat.

He’s not much of a lap sitter, so it came as a surprise.   I sat completely still for about ten minutes, but I really had to shift him as I had things to do.   He wasn’t pleased.   But placed himself right on the end of the chair just in case I chose to sit back down and submit.

Instead I laboriously destalked lavender.

You know how it is; you cut off the flower stalks from the lavender and stick them in a bag.   I have three such huge bags of flowers. And they have to be attended to.

So with lots of fresh air (the fantastic aroma of the lavender oil can make you woozy) I worked and worked and came up with this small amount.

I’ve left it on its side so little spiders and bugs can crawl out.

And then I worked on the stachys seeds.   I forgot to mention that it has been raining all day. A wonderful event and perfect for seed and stalk work.   Maybe that was why Artur was so clingy, storms and rain in his little world have been very rare this summer.

I was given another lap sitting purring go in the afternoon, and this time I was prepared. I had my seeds.

It’s amazing how the softness of the fluffy lambs ears contrast so greatly with the flower stalks. They are stiff and prickly and the seeds hide deep inside each little capsule.

You need tweezers to get them out. And you don’t need a cat on your lap at the same time.

I gave up. And decided to enjoy the cease of rain by planting out tubers.

The irises have plumped up well in their mix of water and compost. It’s quite a soup of the stuff.

They should go in a bit fat line down the edge of the potager wall. But the cosmos insist on growing well and I can’t bring myself to undearth them.

So I have decided they can go in a long fat line in the calabert bed.

It’s chiefly a ruse to hide the unslightly lavender stoechas plants which look very sick. So sick in fact I think they are going to be turfed out this winter. But for now they are still flowering, if patchily, and will stay.

I have cheated by uprooting some very healthy irises which I planted in the stachys bed a few years back.   I need some foliage along this new line of irises just to see the effect.

Leslie’s tubers are just that. Fat sausage shaped lumps with roots attached. This is as far as you get from instant gardening.

In the spring, and only then will I know if the tubers have rooted and are alive.

And there is also the fun of not knowing what colours I have.   But to be honest, iris germanica work for me, not for the fleeting few weeks of flowers, but for the year round foliage I can get out of them.

In wet Britain, the foilage is cut back to expose the tubers to as much air and sun as possible. Here, I don’t have to worry about the baking the tubers will get. Baking is guaranteed.

The line in the calabert bed looks rather unprepossessing. But I’m glad to have done the job.   Fingers crossed for a fine display in spring.