Jardinage (a.k.a., Gardening)

We have moved out to France at a fabulous time of year as the flowers are blooming left right and centre. In fact, so quickly that if you blink you might miss them. They have been a real inspiration for the design of my most recent sample board that I featured at the end of my last blog post.

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I was out in the garden yesterday taking some photographs, however flowers, plus wind, plus taking photos don’t really go hand in hand so I did my best!

There are beautiful roses at the top of the garden…

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Muddled in with these pink rock roses below…

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And these rather crazy-looking, aptly named “Crimson bottlebrushes”….

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I can’t wait to see what happens to these exotic looking torch lilies in the foreground (also known as red hot pokers!), and I need to find out what the ones in the background are…

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At the other end of the garden we have this pretty Red Buckwheat that the bumble bees seem to love…

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Some lovely irises in a variety of colours including the purple here, plus red and yellow…

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We are also eagerly awaiting the arrival of the deep red coloured cherries, at present they are very green but our patience should be worth it in the long run…

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The final news on the flowers front is that the elderflower tree is ready to harvest so we can make our own cordial (or liqueur!). I have never tried to make it before, but having looked up a recipe it sounds pretty straight forward, basically a load of sugar and a trip to the pharmacy for some citric acid!

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The vegetable garden is also coming on, I spent time earlier this week planting beans, I was especially taken by the mysterious large coloured seeds – who knows what they will grow into…

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The chore of the week has been all the weeding. There is a plant called Scouring Rush/Horsetail (known as Prêle in French) everywhere and it seems to grow at a rate of knots (I noticed a flower bed I had spent time on last week already had tendrils at least 15cm tall today even though I thought I had pulled them all out-argh!!). It is really nasty and is pretty much impossible to kill or get the roots up as they are so long. This wheelbarrow-full was from just one of the beds.

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We are also being visited by hundreds of different insects, most of which are just too quick or camera shy for me to capture. I spotted a bee with a rather fetching ginger wig on darting in and out of all of the flowers the other day!

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There has also been a very sociable butterfly circling round the same spot for a fews days now (George informs that it’s of the Zebra Swallowtail variety), which just loved posing for photographs.

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This is rather apt as I have spent a number of hours this week working on a book of British Butterflies that was given to me last year, I wrote a bit about it in my previous blog post about stub bindings. It was published in 1835 and when I pulled the original cover from the book I found an advert that had been recycled in order to construct the spine – fantastic!

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More about how I am getting on with this binding in a future blog update. In the meantime, it’s that time again, the grass has reached a critical length and needs to be dealt with so off to do some mowing…

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