Stripes

I’m in for lunch and charging my way through fried eggs and potatoes. Hearty peasant lunch for this trainee peasant.   And it’s a well earned break. And even better; I downed tools on the dot of 1230pm.   The church bells in St Michel reminded me.   But it means I’m back on French manual labour rhythm at last.

I started the day just goggling at the fantastic cherry blossom outside the windows.   The trees aren’t in their complete unfurled state, but they glow with white blossom and hopefully I will be able to capture the colour and scope of all the trees.

It was all hands at the lower potager today. Artur popped by for an inspection but found me rather dull company. I was on my hands and knees in the strawberry bed cutting back hundreds of verbena bonariensis stalks. So I didn’t give him my full attention.

And of course, I was gauntleted to the elbows so he didn’t find that fun to be patted with what must have felt like saucepan scourers.   But there are nettles in here and I was determined to yank them out of the wall before I did anything else.

I managed to pull up a few brambles as well along the way. And then had a fun tussle with dead bits of echinops foliage. I mislaid a pair of secatueurs somewhere along the way (oh god, I’m turning into Grandy!) but went up to the shed to fetch a second pair.

No doubt the tools will turn up somewhere. but I was baffled. After all I crawled about this long, long bed cutting and tidying for at least an hour and didn’t spot them. But still, the strawberries are now well exposed and ready to ripen.   And I was delighted to find that there are some new vbs appearing.   Minus 15C didn’t fell the lot of them after all.

You can see by the pictures that I was mercifully in the shade all morning for this task.   But now with a lovely late spring day dazzling, it was time to get mulching.   Luckily I’m more suitably clad today.   Long sleeve shirt, buttoned to the chin and my trusty sun hat firmly on my head.

I started in on the peas and beans.   And it was a tale of two rows. I can’t work out why one row of peas is up and romping and the other looks suspiciously as though I had forgotten to sow.   I checked but there they were; but under the soill the lurking peas were just not germinating.   So I have sloshed water into the artfully constructed channels and mulched like mad.  

Everyone in Britain is worrying about water shortages, but here we’ve learned you have to husband this precious resource in everything you do.   So I sow in rows, and then earth up the edges so that no water flows anywhere but along each pea bed.   And then mulch on top as much as I can.

The effect is rather fun and stripy. The broad beans, I am relieved to see, show no sign of recalcitrance, and they were given a good dose and mulch as well.   I still have weeding to do up in the top part of this bed. But it’s not a priority. I will plant dwarf french beans here in a few months time. And have plenty of other more urgent things on my list before I get upset by unwanted greenery.