A Breath of Spring.

For a few hours today we had blue skies and sunshine, a breath of spring gently wafting over the garden.
I mooched around tidying here and there, stopping to take photographs of emerging primroses,crocuses and daffodils and getting dirt under my fingernails.

Bliss!

I'm joining Susan @ A Southern Daydreamer for Outdoor Wednesday
and Kim @ Savvy Southern Style for the very first
Wow Us Wednesdays Party

click on the links, or on the sidebar buttons,

 to see who else is sharing this week.

Anyone for salad?

Here's the latest from the potager..................................the salad leaves are amazing I am serving my version of a mesclun salad every evening.
The name mesclun comes from Southern French mescla "to mix", I pick a variety of baby salad leaves red and green to which I add add baby spinach leaves & parsley.
However, I fear we may soon be unable to keep on top of them!!

The early and main crop potatoes are also doing well, I spent some time yesterday earthing them up to encourage growth.

There's a very old English proverb that says:
"ne'er cast a clout til May be out"

Wikipedia explains the proverb like this:

Advice not to change from winter clothes to summer clothes until June, as there is often a sudden cold snap in May. May here refers to the common name of the hawthorn bush, whose blossom indicates the arrival of summer, or warmer weather.
I recently listened to a gardening programme on the radio and the expert obviously agrees with the proverb because he said he would not be planting out his courgettes (zucchini) until June 1st.

Our hawthorn bushes are covered in beautiful white blossom and smell heavenly, but even though my cougettes and pumpkins look ready to go in now I think the folklore and the expert probably know best and I'll wait until 1st June too.

H is for.........................Hedge Haircut

If only this had happened last week, it would have made a great H post for Mrs Matlock's Alphabe-Thursday meme.

The hedges alongside the little lane that leads to our house received a haircut today, and boy was it severe!

On the other side of the lane are fields where for many months of the year cows graze on lush Normandy grass and so the hedges were being cut back in preparation for their arrival.
(We prefer to think the reason for the tidy up was to welcome our friends Sarah @ Hyacinths For The Soul & her husband who will be visiting us next month).

Every day there are more and more wild primroses appearing in the lane.

Miniature daffodils make their debut in the flower beds.
Hope you're all having a great weekend. This time next week I'll be in Paris!!

A final farewell to my summer garden.

The weather this week has been so changeable, with gales, rain (Note to self: thanks heavens for new roof) and amazingly plenty of sunshine.

So, as summer leaves Normandy and Autumn arrives in a blaze of glory here are some garden memories to tide us over until next year.

The wonderful blue hibiscus tree which we uncovered whilst clearing out the overgrown flower beds when we moved here in 1996.

It's been a wonderful summer for roses, must be all that rain!

The lavender was glorious this year, I planted it about 6 years ago after my first visit to Monet's garden at Giverney.

Giverny is also famous for the grand allee of nasturtiums and that was something else that I added to my garden beneath the espaliered apple and pear trees.

They don't have a black and white cocker spaniel hiding in the nasturtiums in Giverny though!

The leaves are beginning to turn.......................

Against the old stone wall an obsolete and rusted iron water pump covered in ivy and an old, shabby folding garden chair with pink geranium, a Kodak moment waiting to happen.

à bien tôt
Maggie

News from the potager

Some of you may remember from a post last year that a few years ago a pair of moorhens decided to make their home on the small pond next to the potager.

This year they produced just the one chick but it is growing well thanks to non stop feeding from the doting parent.

I feed them stale bread every morning, papa moorhen comes to the door & squawks until I go out.

Today I watched as he & the chick walked along the top of the garden wall, a first for the youngster.

6 times papa brought bread to the chick and 6 times the little beggar dropped it over the side into the field.

What a patient parent!

The vegetable garden is coming along well this year, the potatoes are great and may well take over the plot!

Thanks Sean!

We should be having blueberries with everything quite soon and the haricot beans are just beginning to flower which bodes well for later next month.

Courgettes are looking sickly (no idea why) but the bettraves (beets) are doing well after a shaky start.

We need rain!

Potager update

We are well and truly enjoying a bumper crop of vegetables much to my surprise!!

The new (to us) yellow beans are wonderful, so soft & creamy.

As is usually the case I have far too many to eat all at once, so I have been busy blanching & freezing them and also handing them out to all & sundry.

The tomatoes are doing well after a slow start although I'm hoping there will still be some green ones left so I can try a recipe from the Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe cook book soon.

The same cook book has a great recipe for "summer squash casserole" which I have made twice with some extra large (ok, I forgot to pick them in time) round zucchini. My other half who always maintains that he hates courgettes loves the casserole and wants it on the menu as often as possible. Go figure!

a bientot

Potager produce

All things in the potager are flourishing and we are enjoying freshly picked vegetables and salad everyday.

Yesterdays supper included chou fleur & courgettes and tonight I'll serve the first tiny new potatoes which I dug up less than 15 minutes ago.

Bon appetit

Beetroot Bonanza

This is the first year that I have grown beetroot, I bought the young plantlets from a vendor at the local market in Le Molay Littry so can't claim all the glory but am pleased as punch with the results.

The first ones I harvested were cooked simply - skin on, tops cut off and then peeled & sliced, we ate them cold with ham & cheese but this week feeling a little more adventurous I made beet soup adapted from a Fearnley-Whittingstall recipe which I found in a magazine.

Delicious!

Flushed with success I've bought some beetroot seeds and hope to grow my own plantlets for a second crop.

Bon weekend a tout

Maggie

and after

So here's what the potager looks like now.

Potager before

The weather this past week has been appalling!!
Thunderstorms on Wednesday took out our internet connection so life was even quieter than usual.
Between the showers I continued to work in the potager which is coming along in leaps and bounds.
These pix were taken before anything was planted, it looks a lot different now.
a bientot

Plant nursery

The weather is still playing fast & loose and making planting decisions difficult. I'm going to wait for warmer days before the tomato plants go out but I've several runner bean seedlings planted now, the yellow & green haricots have broken soil and yesterday we had baby spinach leaves from the garden in our dinner salad.

S the G was here today working on the lawns, the gardens have never looked so good before!!

The pic shows my potted seedlings in front of the house, enjoying the sunshine.

a bientot

Potager Update

The weather this week has been variable, hot & sunny days followed by rainy nights. Ideal planting weather, so I now have 2 rows each of haricot vert & jeune, mixed salad leaves, spinach, 12 betrave and 6 chou fleur plants in the soil.

The runner bean supports are up, the seedlings are now about 8 inches high and they will be going in, in the next few days.

We visited another new garden centre yesterday and came away with pretty geraniums for the pots at the front of the house, more compost and 2 blueberry bushes. I have long wanted to grow my own blueberries, they are always in short supply and expensive to buy in the supermarket and blueberry just happens to be my favourite type of muffin. I bought Myrtille Patriot & Myrtille Blue Crop as the RHS website tells me that the yield will be higher with 2 different species able to cross pollinate. We shall see!!

The picture shows Sean the Gardener putting the finishing touches to the low fence surrounding the central plot.

Bon weekend