Garden

We were planning to think about the garden after getting the apartment in the house liveable/finished… That now seems still quite a way off, so this year we decided to start on the garden.

There is a front yard that had been used to store old machinery and equipment, so even if it ever was a garden it hasn’t been one recently. The house faces South and the view is over Champagne vineyards in the gently sloping valley, so the (planned!) patio in front of the kitchen would have an even better view if there was a garden in front of it rather than… Well, soil & weeds & bits of builders’ rubble! Oh, and more bones & teeth than I was expecting; a reminder that it used to be a fermette!

Last summer we had cleared most of the space of weeds (and pile of stones!), but when we got back there in November it didn’t look as though we had done anything. Great fun in April, then, when we had bought a load of plants (nearly 150) to plant on a long weekend!

But now we do have a (fledgling) garden. Visiting in May meant another weeding marathon, but most of the plants had survived, and many were flowering, so we were really pleased!

When I’m there this trip, I plan to spend the cool part of the early morning (i.e. before about 9 am!) doing weeding/hoeing, and maybe a bit more in the evenings, so hopefully I should get on top of it – fingers crossed! When we were at the neighbours gîte in June I went round several mornings while David was able to have a lie-in & was happily bashing away at the weeds before 7.30 (one day before 5 – very productive!). The only worry I had was if anyone saw me carrying my huge mug of green tea round there they might think I’m weird! But I was consoled when I remembered they probably think I’m weird anyway because I’m English!

I never thought I'd see the day when my wish-list contains a piochet (I don't know what it is in English, it's not in my dictionary or on Babel Fish; I think it's a type of mattock?) - never have been a Jimmy Choo type of girl, but seem to be getting less girly as I get older! Scarily, that seems to run in the family (Hi, Karen!)...