Stone crops

So what do you do with the contents of your three foot thick walls that are being demolished?  I didn’t realise just how many granite boulders go into the building of these old Ardeche farmhouses.

So when Etienne and Clovis asked ‘where to you want ’em?’ I just pointed vaguely at the courtyard and hoped that they might be of use to Nicolas in the garden.   He needed about a dozen or so good sized rocks for his extension of the little wall he was going to build in the lower vegetable garden.

The little wall that is now in place is where the strawberries grow. Or try to grow between the weeds.   And I wanted him to help me with the difficult corner that hosts more brambles and an old sickly rose bush than I ever could have wished for.   So he proposed extending the little wall all the way around the curve. I would lose a bit of space in that quadrant of the potager; but all in a good cause I think.

But I hadn’t counted on this huge volume. So what to do? Why keep building of course. Dry stone only, as they are quicker and also because these are lower walls that the usual ones on the property.   Watch this space.