Small steps

If I avoid certain areas, I can almost feel like I’m making progress.  But it’s slow.

Or was that the unseasonably warm weather that slowed me down?

It felt like I was wading uphill when I had to get all the thyme plants out of the fallen wall and onto the next terrace.

But it’s done.  Twenty five rather plump and heavy thyme plants are now nestling in a very strange space. In the former basil and bean beds of the potager.  I finished half the job in a rather unfortunate downpour which I hadn’t expected.

And it’s sad to think that I was actually fearful of another flood. Rain shouldn’t make you scared.  But I just don’t feel ready for more disasters.  So I felt fragile. And wet.

But with a change of clothes and the sight of Nicolas’ car beetling up the drive made me put on that chirpy look which belied a rather nervous disposition.

Luckily Nicolas was in a good mood (despite sciatica from yesteday’s huge rock haul).  On today’s agenda was just a bit of the new low wall to finish in the shade garden, and then the reinforcing of the barn garden path. And the steps up to the top vegetable garden.

But Nicolas has reminded me that he is only doing this wall as a favour. He had always pledged that he would retire from wall building at 40.  And I had quite (wilfully) forgotten that he is now 41.

So this is his last wall.

The barn garden path now has an edge that looks more at home on an Ardeche road that suffered a landslide than a domestic garden.

But that’s fine. I’m happy to see a path which looks like a tank can’t shift the rocks.  A quick landscape and some gravel and it will look as if it has always been there.

I didn’t have the energy to scrape gravel from the courtyard and add it to the path however.

I seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time in the late afternoon just sitting on a rock and looking.  Artur obliged by lap sitting; and purred like a sewing machine until he caught sight of a lost hunting dog on the road above the garden. Suddenly he turned into a cat again, rather than my best garden companion, and slunk away.

No amount of cajoling could get him back into that pet mode. So I packed up my tools and came indoors to paint walls instead.

I think the week has been very, very long and I’m flagging. But tomorrow I have the perfect distraction; hot and cold running help.

It is going to take a lot of energy and enthusiasm to work out how to manage the electrician, two builders, two soil diggers and the bulldozer man. But this is what one does. You just get on and get this farm sorted.