A study in brown

No scarlet alas.  But the lime green of the euphorbia wulfenii in the herb garden is a pleasing distraction.

I seemed to spend a day in the dirt. Rain is forecast on Sunday and that is our first proper rain in a whole month. So I was racing about trying to get areas graded, raked and sown with grass seed.

I needed help. And today I had hot and cold running helpers.  Etienne and Bebere working away in the courtyard, and Manu and Bernard on meater jobs.  Manu was set straight to work repairing fallen gate posts and digging ditches and shifting soil.

Berrnard  had a fiddlier job and one which is just delightful. He installed a separate tap for my new automatic watering system.  And even managed to sort out the hoses so I dont’ have to feed them through a window in the cellar. They now go neatly through a small aperture in the base of the stone cellar and out into the garden.

I’m very keen to have the entrance driveway to our farm look more farmlike, and less like a buildng site.

So I have marked out where the soil will go and then I can sow grass seed. But for now there are still two piles of yellow sand and hoggin for the last part of the courtyard work.

I even started raking the soil from the excavations but realised it was more stone than soil. So I have decided to delegate that rather fussy task. If it doesn’t get done this weekend (and my list of jobs is eye wateringly long) then I’ll ask Manu to do it next week.

Instead I had a go at the area beyond the driveway which is now levelled  and just itching to be raked and sown with grass seed.

My mantra around this farm is wherever I can, I will make it easier to mow rather than strim. It’s far better for my back, and a joy to push a machine rather than haul it on my back. So hopefully this new area will germinate with a week of unsettled weather and I can ignore it until it’s ready to mow.

Entertainment came in the form of Etienne and Bebere coming up with clever schemes to move very heavy rocks. How about this for inventive? Using the van to haul the stones away.  We now have quite an impressive pile at the far end of the farm near the parking area.

After lunch I seemed to have a lull. You know how it is when you have just so many thing but don’t know where to start. So I did the logical thing and went to find Artur and wake him up.

He was delighted to have a lunchtime cuddle and a bit of attention and after five happy minutes I was fired up to sow some broad beans, rake more soil and then paint the compost bins.  (And shelves and an undercoat on the planters.)

I forgot to take a picture of the bins. The paint is an undercoat I think. I like Sarah’s idea of using the same colour as the railings. Farrow and Ball Saxon Green. But do I have enough? I will find out tomorrow.