Changes at our place (with some photos)

Continuing our trench:

Gosh, it's nearly two years since I posted about Vincent's trench, and it seems to have worked wonderfully; the potager is not weed free, but we definitely don't seem to be having any root incursion,and that was the main thing!

Bindweed remains a problem, but it's no longer 'seeping' in from the field, and I think I've virtually eradicated the couch grass [and that one I can manage - wait for damp ground, dig gently, and it pulls out nicely].  We are going to try spot spraying with a different herbicide [recommended by the very helpful chap who told us about the root killer which worked fabulously on the sycamore stump], but that's a post for another day [want to see if it works, first!]...

I don't know why I didn't get him to continue digging in the membrane to the fence we share with Philippe, but it pretty quickly became apparent that I should have done.

Oh, well, finally got around to asking him to come back, and it's "sorted" now.

AND, he brought and spread for us a load of topsoil [the potager had sunk quite a lot].

I'm very keen to start planting things, but also know that if we don't get the space bindweed-free before we start we've set ourselves up for years of 'pain'; I've waited this long, I can wait a bit longer!

Shredder:

We ordered a shredder, that arrived disassembled into small enough bits that we could get it into the car [so didn't have to hire a van].

It assembled pretty easily - a bit of pushing & shoving and (if I remember correctly) only a bit of 'percussive adjustment' from a 'universal spanner' [I always use a wood block to protect everything I'm 'drifting' from the head of the hammer, so it's not as brutal as it sounds!], and it was there.

We started on the compost "mountain" that had shrunk somewhat, but was a) still huge, and b) nowhere near becoming compost.

We were watering the shreddings really well into the trench left behind after M. Milesi had built his wall - we wanted to not have a huge gap, and are hoping to plant some red elder/smokebush/red twisted hazel when we can get around to it.

We just need nature to work its magic, now.

Coloured garden areas:

Not sure why I've put this here, as I haven't got any photos...  But I am attempting to have (some) themed areas near the driveway.

After my surgery last year [a BIG sorry to David], I managed to accumulate 69 pots to take to France [I managed to load all of them with only one hand, so I did what little I could], and 71 plants [I think I'd managed to sneak a couple of transplants into one pot?], which my wonderful assistant in his (temporary) role of head gardener planted.

It was 25°C at 10pm, so we probably got it badly wrong with when to take plants to a hot, continental, climate...

The aim is to have a bunch of pink coloured plants all near each other, then merging into purple/blue planting, which is next to "hot" colours.

Obviously, there will be things popping up [particularly yellow daisy-type flowers] that I may need to move...

And despite what I have read/been told, don't chop down Oriental Poppies; I had a fabulous clump of "Allegro", which I managed to reduce to about four sickly sprouts...  I thought I'd nothing to lose by transplanting them to where I wanted them (most of them looked on the way out), so I think I have a couple of tiny shoots in the "hot" area, and one I missed in the "pink" zone.

On the upside: we bought a small pump with a tube that drops down into our rainwater tank, and that works brilliantly - so much so that we managed to water in all the plants and soak most of the compost/shreddings before it ran out.  Another long-term aim is to sort out the leak in the tank, and create a drain nearer the top for when it will overfill.

Stealing the drive:

Well, not stealing, more 're-allocating'...

The old (pale brown) bark is where the drive used to finish...

But because of the piles of sand and gravel, we haven't used that space for several years (and don't miss it), so it made sense [to me, at any rate!], to properly incorporate it into the garden...

We've been accumulating tufa every time we find some, and nearly have enough to give the drive a defined edge...

Well, at least we've started, and it looks a lot tidier!

Orchids in the meadow:

We know we probably shouldn't...  [Move orchid plants, that is.]

But since the communes have all taken to mowing down the verges regularly through the summer...

We've seen a tiny fraction of the number of plants/varieties in the countryside...  [They're going to be eradicated in the wild if that continues; like England.]

And Jean-Luc mows ours off when he cuts the hay...

So we transplanted as many orchids as we could find to the edges J-L can't get at...

And we've only had a couple of plants looking a bit sickly, but we've got another 12-15 flowering away.

We dug as huge a clump of soil out as we could and, and used the mycorrhiza powder in the holes.

Now we're just hoping they will set seed and we can establish a colony.

David one day [he'd strimmed that part down to the ground about eight weeks earlier; to the left of the picture is the bit he hadn't touched - spot the difference?].

One day later: he'd cut pathways so we can get to the plants we're trying to cosset [some fruit trees, the above orchids and our nettle colony (not mad; we haven't seen any of either variety of swallowtail, or the marbled white,  since we cleared behind the house, and I want to encourage whatever butterflies had laid their eggs on them to come back) - OK, we're not actively cossetting the nettles, but I want them to establish away from where the hay-cutting will chop them down].

Phew, that's it for me [for now!].