Hot and cold running staff

Oh the joys of help. Remember the bomb site that was the wall at the bottom of the herb garden?

Here it is. It took Nicolas three hours to build.

My contribution was arranging small buckets of little stones within easy reach. Plus a pile of medium ones and err, I left the huge ones well alone.

Best of all, Nicolas cleaned up all the mess in front, found the broom and tidied the while area. Hurrah.

No wait, that wasn’t enough. We had leftovers.

So where can I get a small wall built in an hour before lunch?  Why there was only one place I could think of.

On the oak bank.

It didn’t require any weeding and there was already a nice soft bit of soil ready for a small low wall.

So up came the stones, and I foraged for more at the end of the parking area and beside the top potager.

It’s a mini full stop.  When you look at the bank from the courtyard you can barely see it.  But I hope that it will be a visual treat among the verticals of the eragrostis and gaura that will soon be growing here.

I took advice and won’t plant the little gauras  or grasses out right now.  I will wait for spring.

And it’s a shame as last year was such a mild winter you could have got away with it. But we just don’t know if we will get a seriously cold winter. A business as usual Ardeche winter.

Well, not a huge winter with months long covering of snow and seriously cold temperatures that my dear friends experience in Minnesota and Wisconsin.  But we have gone to minus 18C for a week two Februaries ago. No three. So it’s still a bit fresh in my mind. I lost a lot of plants.  

Oh for a crystal ball to know just how low the temperature will go.  I’d love to move the gauras out of the potting shed and get them into the ground.

Never mind. I can admire the bare earth and the little wall and just yearn for a mild February and get planting.