Ardèche wildflowers

This has been dangling on my desktop for ages. And if you looked out the window right now – 31 Celsius and a storm brewing – you would not see the Ardèche wildflowers at all.

I’m certainly not going to traipse out there to take a snap.

It’s hide inside with the paint pot day today. Touching up bits of walls and generally being a good egg with the sorting and the maintenance. (Looking at you pantry and ensuite bathroom walls.)

Out there you would see parched black oat grass and all sorts of things ‘going over’.

But this year was so wonderfully wet and verdant that I wanted to show you some of the wildflowers around the farm.

Poppies, clover, salvias, campions, you name it.

You couldn’t step for fear of treading on some gems.

Each walk through the forest had me harvesting all this fab briza media grass (common quaking grass? I think so.)

It is now safely tucked away in bunches in the potting shed for autumn.

Each bunch sticks like mad to any other bunch so you have to string them up with care. (And no, I will not be painting that rusty barrel ring – just yet. But it looks hideous. I will save it for another heat wave day.)

I do love the appearance of all these annual grasses on the steep terrace banks.

But they do get shoved aside by the very pushy black oat grass.

It is so loathed in agriculture as it turns up in among normal oats and wheat crops and drives farmers mad. And I inherited the prejudice from a former life with the family wheat farm back in Australia.

But I did laugh when I realised that I spend an inordinate amount of time photographing the stipa gigantea plants in the garden. And what are they? Just a gussied up version of the wild black oat.

So take that prejudice. I should just get over myself.

Yes, it’s way too tall compared to the other wild grasses I permit to flourish.

And I do obsessively cut it back or yank it out every time I go for a walk.

But when your walks are like this….

Who is counting the weeds?