My favourite weeds

Now here is a quiet shot from a very busy day; I actually made time to sit down in the vegetable garden and weed a few of the beds: the raspberries and strawberries were getting swamped by all sorts of unwanted greenery.

But in among the easily lobbed onto the compost heap I found lettuce seedlings and coriander. This coriander is amazing. It can be swamped in a thick mulch, and yet every year up it pops, and self seeds all over the garden.

I wish it stayed green and juicy when the cucumbers ripen; but alas, we are much too hot in summer not to have coriander bolting by June.

And the lettuce seedlings are a bonus. What a treat. I had forgotten I let some bolt last summer: I probably overlooked them. I am keeping those.

But this is not the real adventures of the day. It all kicked off at 815am with the arrival of Didier and his gravel load: two cubic metres.

Half for the triangle of land in front of the house we use as a parking area, and half up the top of the property for distribution all over the place.

Manu was on hand, keen as mustard, to start ferrying the wheelbarrow loads to the barn.

I was in strictly supervisory mode: but somehow managed to make and rake and week a path behind the potting shed before Manu arrived with five wheelbarrow loads of gravel.

Very pleased with this path for a very silly reason. It’s my access path to the main watering butts on the side of the potting shed. And I often go up in my slippers early in the morning to water the seedlings. And I often come back with muddy feet.  Not any more.

The rest of the gravel will be shovelled into buckets (me) and poured onto the bald bits in the herb garden and along the gravel paths in the vegetable garden.

And the mole manages to muck up my neatly gravelled path to the potting shed. So that will have to be attended to.

I just didn’t have time today. Bernard needed help with the electrics in the main house and I ran around like a person with too many staff to manage.

There was even a brief interlude when we hauled a wardrobe out of my office, put it into the car and we drove around the mountain to our friend Elodie’s. She was keen on the wardrobe. So that felt great.

One day (when?) I’m actually going to be able to spend time in my office and actually sort thigns out.  I have shelves and a natty red venetian blind against the glaring sun, and space now. Fancy.

So that was my day. Artur was cross as there was too many heavy trucks and then too many people about what he thinks of as his territory.

He positioned himself on the box right at the entrance to the potting shed; I was able to at least pat his head and wake him up each time I passed.

He stalked down when I finally had the farm to myself and was weeding. But he was distracted by the chance of a rustling something over in the soft fruit orchard
and I didn’t even get to end my day with a long purring session.

Tomorrow is market day, so I have prepared my vases of flowers for my friends. I even have one for the boulangere, who has promised to swap me a bunch of flowers for a chocolate eclair. Now that’s what I call a good barter economy.