Gluts

All this lovely rain has given the asters in the east garden a good summer.   I have barely had to dead head them it seems.   But I was looking carefully at this part of the garden and can see lots of things missing.

Flowers. More flowers. I need many more plants to travel up the steep bank, over to the left, up around the holm oak above. It just feels so linear and crammed with asters.

I do have many more sedums to add once I remove the miscanthus on the left under the mock orange tree.   So that will bulk out the bed.   But I need to think about some colour up the bank – heathers perhaps.

I had so much heather envy when we were travelling in the Cevennes this week.   Everyone seems to have them but not us.   Similar soil, granite rock, dry conditions.   But none that I can see on our entire property.   So investment needed.

But I can’t do much about it now.   So instead I turned to something that can be increased – my roses. I took a huge bucket of cuttings of the Gertie Jeyklls in the courtyard and spent a happy half hour stripping the leaves and putting them in pots and the ground behind the potting shed.

The potting shed by the way is looking less stark in the summer months. Almost a pleasure to look upon when you are low down in the garden mooching about.   I have spotted a pennisetum I want to move from the bank below the pool.   No one is able to admire its beautiful flowers from that vantage point, so I think I will move it to the courtyard.

But no more time for admiring, there’s picking to do.   Beans, endless beans. I must put in less runner beans and more French beans next year.   Still, I love a glut.

And I had another mini glut. Peche de vigne.   The dictionary calls them bush peaches, but that doesn’t sound exotic enough.   I bought two kilos of the bright yellow ones from a stall holder on the mountain coming down to Les Vans on Thursday.

And then when we visited Andrew afterwards he loaded us up with his pink peaches.   So have glut will make jam. Again.

And to finish: here is a future glut.   Eucalpytus trees.   They have germinated so well that I can’t resist potting them on.   I have no idea how tough they are going to be this autumn and winter, but I’ll keep growing and nurturing them and then we shall see where on earth I shall plant them.