Beaux jours

The lovely days. 

It's worth all the cutting back, mowing, strimming, and all the other months of garden taming (attempted) to enjoy the first days of mid spring/early summer? - very advanced this year after loads of rain, periods of full on heat and very little frost. The roses are spectacular as is all other blossom; and as the 'normal' Saint Glace period (a few days around the 15th May) seems to be rainy rather than icy, we should have mountains of peaches.

We also had super helpful people staying in the form of nephew and partner who built a small greenhouse/lean-to with found windows and stone blocks, plus mowing and weeding, The Son planted early veg plants and I, fuelled with such help - what a difference team work makes! - got a load of other overdue outside jobs done.

A few pictures of the garden in its manic glory before everything heat-shrivels in real summer.

Recalling heat/cold

It must be the coldest day of the year here so far - about -2 in the day; a day of solid greyness, everything utterly silent as if snow might start falling, but nothing is forecast.

I did walk the dog but, unsually, didn't enjoy it, just very keen to get back inside and get a fire going. I did also barrow some wood in, and attempted to clear one of the overgrown garden beds but it was short-lived... back to making put-off phone calls and sorting in-tray filings. 

While trying to find a photo of my passport, I came across a few garden pictures taken last July. The one below sticks in my mind. It was about 34 degrees in the evening and I was trying to capture the essence of the mid summer to add photos to our website. The river beckoned, shirt stuck to my back with sweat, mozzies homing in for a dusk feeding session . . . all impossible to imagine now as I sit in our 'office' on the landing which I have sealed off with an old sheet to trap the heat from the oil heater under the desk. It's a lot better than the yawning void onto the staircase which we naively thought would heat up if we opened the kitchen door - where the wood stove is. 

The kitchen door stays firmly shut, that room the only really warm sanctuary in the house; but it's okay, we just scurry around the rest of the house dressed in many jumpers, (as the previous resident did, and the ones before her,) occasionally stopping to glance out of a window and remember when it was too hot to venture outside...

Good year for the roses - as Elvis sang (Costello)

It is in fact the most incredible year for roses as well as all other blossom - here certainly, and I hope where you are too.

The crumbling garage is blessed with a pale yellow tea rose which ambles slowly up its stonework, usually giving up with an almost audible sigh as May moves towards June. This year it is as showy as a Liberace rhinestone suit - blossom deeper in colour, almost golden with a faint scent of darjeeling. I've tried to capture its beauty on film but it's almost impossible - maybe just something to place in the memory drawer of the mind.

All flowers seem twice as big as usual. We must have had enough rain, no heavy frost and sufficient sunlight over the last couple of months. I'd love it to stay like this but glancing at the garden hoses while trying to locate a paintbrush this morning, I suspect we'll be in for another summer of heat and dryness.

Camper vans have started to emerge like angular, swaying white snails along the main route to Saumur, the Loire already at a late summer level. Business as usual while the climatologists rightly state for perhaps the 40th year or so that we are heading in a more than worrying direction.

 

After the storm

And it was an impressive one... 

I don't think I've ever seen so much continual lightning over an hour or so - almost strobe-like. I looked out of our top floor velux windows and considered, as you do when confronted with the full force of nature, how terribly small we and our daily concerns are. Yesterday afternoon I was worrying about the seething mass of mosquito larvae in our new pond, and the fact I had lost the smaller 'tic fork' for removing unwanted guests from the older dog. Seeing the trees bent over at an alarming degree as the wind lashed our home reminded me of the rather bigger picture, part of which is increasingly bizarre weather patterns, or no patterns in fact. 

My current novel has reached the point where Londonia residents are leaving the lower flooding states and re-settling on the various higher points of the city - Muswell Hill, Angel Islington, and where my hero and narrator (a fanciful French 18th century couch) currently resides, Hampstead Heath. Living with various dystopian scenarios does make one a little, not exactly gloomy . . . speculative, thoughtful, scared, sometimes. 

Anyway, the garden wasn't flooded by our little river that passes through and the only major catastrophe was that the fabulously blousey 'Rambling Rector' rose had parted company with the wall and was bent over itself like a seated someone sleeping off a hangover. Luckily it had been showing off madly over the last few weeks, brightening our days with its pink blooms, and I had taken many photographs. And it will do it all again next year as a friend pointed out. 

The thing that made me feel most sad was seeing the birds hopping about on the bowed branches looking for their nest. I found it as we cut the rose back; a beautiful construction of wound long grass, moss and feathers, and four little white/ grey eggs... I put it back in a nook of branches but I doubt very much they will return. I don't possess their delicate skills.

I think I've posted this animated film that I made with son, Ezra before, but it seems most fitting to re-air it on this post-storm morning. The Nest Apprentice. Inspired by a dream of a future time where the relationship between us and the rest of the animal world is somewhat different.

The Nest Apprentice. Story written by Kate A Hardy. Animation by Ezra Lockett.

Le Jardin Insolite

Last year during lockdown we sold up in the South of France and headed to an unknown-to-us region of France, the Loire Valley. After two viewings and a 'YES- we'll have it', the house, garden and immediate area were also unknown to us. Such was the coup de coeur, or literally, blow to the heart; in English . . .? Mm, love at first sight?

As we are planning to set up a gîte and jardin du thé a name had to be found. After a few 'err, what about this', sessions, Mark suggested Le Jardin Insolite which is in fact perfect. Insolite is a difficult word to translate: curious, unique, quirky, unusual, veering towards weird and even eerie and downright odd. Anna, the previous owner and master architect of the garden, created from a field - starring not a single tree - a verdant paradise crammed with roses and herbaceous borders that even Capability Brown might have nodded at and said, yeah, not bad, or something more akin to mid 1700s speak. 

So, the insolite part . . . we will over time add to the garden: bizarre sculptures by Leonora Carrington (I wish) and home made little cabins, groovy chicken houses etc, but for the meantime it's a verdant paradise with the occasional TJV/freight train passing at grand vitesse just past our boundary, AND, sadly, a bunch of bored dogs who bark and howl at intervals thus crushing somewhat the lazy, contemplation as one wanders, admiring Anna's, and our, work. We've got used to it now and they (the dogs) do respond to the odd shout, and we get on with the neighbours - and that, especially in a rural community, is valuable to say the least.

I recall that particular amble around the garden on the first viewing; a hot, mid-summer day; the buzzing of insects, the peaceful sound of the little river that runs through the property, the scent of roses, and then the roar of a train on its straight run from Tours to Nantes passing by the line of ash trees that forms the land's delineation. The estate agent had eyed me carefully, no doubt gauging the reaction. It was a slight surprise but our last house had a railway line nearby so not out of the question - and it isn't something likely to appear even on the most honest of estate agents details: hectare of mature garden complete with minor earthquakes at irregular intervals. I like trains, but if it had been a busy road . . . it would have been a brief viewing. 

It's always a lot to take in on two viewings, especially a largish house with outbuildings and a lot of land but luckily we were both in agreement and knew our son (and dogs) would approve, so, here we are gradually tackling the larger house projects and tending the garden as much as possible. Watching a garden develop through the months is fascinating. Our old house was very different - starting with a baked wasteland and creating something verdant was a challenge but it worked, and luckily our buyers are keen gardeners too so I don't feel sad at leaving what we created there. 

The months here have been marked by leaves changing colour and falling, the spiky tree outlines of winter; the first strident forsythia blossom, daffodils, hundreds of different irises, japonica, and now the roses; waterfalls of pink, peach, yellow, red and white. Anna planted two hundred rosebushes and climbers and each day we are seeing new varieties blossoming. My favourite name so far: Rambling Rector. We have started to add a few things such as a pond (under construction) area in the back garden and various trees planted in the early winter but for now it still is very much the garden that Anna planned and planted. 

She has now moved to a house with enormous undeveloped garden about twenty minutes away and is bravely starting on the planning and planting of it. We wish her well, and thank her everyday for making this unique and insolite, bird and insect flower-filled Arcadia.

Bed of roses

Life is not always the above saying. Yesterday was rather more bucket of wilting ragwort.
Actually, it wasn't all bad at all, I just had a headache and the boy was vacillating between vile crossness and manic stupidity. He was tired and hot and headachy too - ultra high pressure it was, with vast cauliflower clouds as he put it - poetic.
Today, same weather, same mother and boy, but roses . . . perhaps not a bed of, but certainly a good vase full. We talked a lot, went for a walk in a village, previously unexplored (by us), went to Carcassonne to get his phone fixed by the miserable bastards in Boeig? Beoig? Boueyg, (however you spell it) telecom; forgot the phone, much to the only-just-hidden pleasure of the sulky 'jeune', and  adjourned to the square to drink foot-high fruit cocktails.
Found the boy a pair of shoes he liked (almost impossible) and two t-shirts that weren't black, and a daft t-shirt with bluebirds on it for Mark. On our return home, the dog hadn't peed on the sofa, and the donkey-birds (see several posts back) in the garden had been replaced by two pairs of musical songsters, twittering happily in the early afternoon sunshine.

As a celebration of the rosier days: petals collected by the boy, and syrup he made subsequently after an afternoon of 'airsoft' gun practise . . .

Oh . . . hello, summer

It arrived as usual here: wham. About a month behind schedule, and all the more welcome for that.
Suddenly, the town is full of people clutching maps and estate agent's brochures; hanging baskets have been hung, and it's just fine to be sitting indoors with a thin t.shirt on, rather than some vile matted old jumper.
In the autumn, I will have a cull of all fetid winter wear - really, this year they will go . . . maybe. It has to be done while the weather is still warm otherwise at the first hint of cold, I'll be seeking shelter in something indescribably awful, but, oh so comforting. This winter my 'second skin' was a purple jumper from 'Emmaüs'; actually, I think it was last year's too. I don't even like purple, not on me anyway; some people look great in it - hi Pen. There's just something about the wool mixture, the length of the sleeves, the perfect draught prevention shape. I've put it in the gardening cupboard and only time and weather will tell if it re-emerges or not.
Anyway . . . I'm sitting here in a vest top before tackling various gardening jobs, including dead-heading the roses. It's been a good year for them (an Elvis Costello song?) huge, bursting with colour and fragrance.
Here's a couple of photos, but it's difficult to capture the pure sumptuance of them. I know that's not a word, but I rather like it.

The cat has turned into a mighty hunter and is polishing off the rabbit population. I did resist the temptation of running over and trying to rescue the poor dangling baby one, here shown, then reality kicked in: feeble, half dead thing, possible trip to the vet . . .

The cherry stoner is out of the cupboard for its once-a-year appearance and Mark has made much jam. The most exciting batch is from the 'bird cherries', small, perfectly round, British post box-red specimens. I think they may be the Acerola variety, in which case I have stocked myself up with about a years worth of Vitamin C when picking them yesterday. These are the cherries from our young tree, I think the 'breast of pigeon' variety. Next jam: apricot.

Post for Claire

Despite the very March-like weather, the roses are coming out. This years incredibly wet spring has produced hundreds of buds and billions of rampant aphids (a few seen here on pictured rose).
Our friend Claire used to live in a house with a rambling garden a few kilometres away from our place. She planted roses: one for each of her four children; when she left the house and exchanged country for city life, she gave us cuttings of the roses. They struggled a little the first couple of years with the parched nature of our garden, but are now well established - full of delicate colour, pale pink, yellow, peach and cream.
I'll give you cuttings, Claire when you get that house with a garden.

Territory

I am going to do it. Soon — along with the book of French roundabouts. Peoples' front gardens. The statement: who we are, how tidy are we, are we just a little bit exciting, eccentric?
A short wander through one of my lurking zones of Limoux found this wall. I want to meet the people behind it . . .  might go back and try and sell them some solar panels just so I can find out what they look like. Chances are, knowing that district, she will be about sixty-seven in a blue-flowered house coat, and his high point of the week will be getting the spotless clio out on a Saturday to do the Leclerc run. Or . . . maybe I'm completely wrong!
When I was about eleven I used to walk to and from my terrible comprehensive school in London, quite an astonishingly long way really. It was the best part of the day: gawping at newly painted front doors, reflecting on strange house names 'thiseldome' or 'dunshoppin', listening for a particular wooden wind chime and smelling the suburban dusty roses of June.
Nothing much has changed really, I'm taller and wider, and the houses are shuttered rather than curtained, but its the same fascination with how people decorate, display and fasten down their own small patch of the earth.