Five on Friday

Well, it looks like summer has arrived at last.

Despite a damp start to the week the temperature is rising daily.
Time to join Amy @ Love Made My Home for Five on Friday.
My Five this week -
 

Pottering.

 

My potting table, a corner of the garage that is all mine!
A box of mixed petunias to liven up some pots and two new additions to the herb garden, flat leaf and curly parsley.

 

I also potted up some more courgette plants and brought a pot of sweet peas outside to harden off before planting out.

 

I never throw away a piece of Quimper faience if I can help it, no matter how cracked and chipped it may be.
This battered old bowl features a lady from Normandy wearing traditional costume although you can't see her for all the seed packets jumbled in there.
Lots of mixed varieties of salad leaves.

Flowers.

Wildflowers, picked whilst out walking Fleur, freshen up an old, chippy white enamel jug and bowl and make working outdoors even more of a joy.

Herbs

My herb garden is thriving after all the rain, the chives are flourishing and attracting bees which I love.

Menthe Marocaine - my new favourite aromatic herb. There are so many varieties to choose from, this one is delicious and we've been enjoying the je ne sais quoi it brings to cocktails and salad dressings.
Some mint plants I've had in the past have taken over the potager. I'm keeping this one pot bound for now.

Wind chimes.

A souvenir of one of our many visits to Savannah, the wind chimes hang from a damson tree growing beside the potager.

Food.
This week cucumbers and radishes seem to be the legumes de jour at the local markets.

A simple dressing of crème fraiche, dill, garlic & chopped red onion combined with chunks of cucumber and thinly sliced radishes was yummy.

Last night I made a cucumber, spring onion, mint and radish salad, the dressing ingredients were extra virgin olive oil, sesame oil, white wine vinegar spiced up with a couple of shakes of dried piri piri flakes for a bit of a kick. Delicious!

I served the salad with slices of Lorraine Pascale's crème fraiche quiche.
I couldn't find the recipe on line to share with you so if you'd like to make it yourself you might have to buy the book!

 

summertime - raspberries & tea in the garden.

The lazy, hazy days of summer are finally here.

This week I've spent my afternoons glued to the television
watching amazing tennis being played at the
All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, Wimbledon.

golden raspberries, so sweet I eat them straight from the canes

The heat is on, literally and figuratively.

Who will win the mens final

Andy Murray 

or

Roger Federer?

Today is Sunday so no play today.

Instead a chance to enjoy another of my summer time favourite things
tea in the garden, next to the potager which is thriving.

courgettes; parsley, chives & thyme; herbs & raspberry canes; mesclun salad leaves

How are you spending your afternoons now that summer's here?

Joining Judith @ Lavender Cottage
for Mosaic Monday

spring trilogy. #1 Plants

Regular followers will know that every spring three things happen here at the Presbytere 

to mark the season.

 #1. New plants for the potager.

When the sun starts to shine this girl's thoughts turn to the garden and all things veggie.

This morning I played in went to the garden centre.

This afternoon I got my hands in the dirt!

The plants that I bought were all pot bound with straggly white roots emerging from the bottom

 so into larger pots they had to go.

Sean the Gardner will be here on Friday to prepare the potager 

ready for planting out these beauties.

Courgettes/zucchini 3 varieties

cherry tomatoes

choux bruxelles 

(sounds so much fancier than brussels sprouts)

and

Belle de Fontenay early potatoes.

To add flavour to the herb garden new ciboulette/chives and persil/parsley plants

will go in alongside the thyme and rosemary which have overwintered just fine.

Have you been out planting and got your hands dirty yet?

Early Sunday morning

During the summer months the potager comes into it's own, providing wonderful fresh produce for the table.

Watering always takes place either late at night when the bats come out to play or early morning whilst waiting for the coffee to brew as happened today.

my favourite salad "cut and come again" mixed leaves and roquet

When I noticed the way the water drops on this opened courgette flower sparkled in the early morning sunlight I had to dash indoors and grab my trusty Lumix.

Did you know that technically courgettes/zucchini are a fruit not a vegetable?
You can use them in cakes and tea breads as well as many savoury dishes.
These two plants are identical yet one bears yellow fruits and the other yellow and green.
Such a rebel!

They have both been quite prolific so I'm trying out all sorts of ways to prepare them. Fritters and casseroles are always good standbys but our favourite recipe this year is for courgette pesto pasta which makes a great BBQ side dish and the cold leftovers (if there are any) are delish.

The plum tree has plenty of fruit on it this year, I hope that the birds leave us some and don't steal all the plums, after all they've already had the cherries, raspberries and blueberries.

Soon the coffee was ready and calling me back to the kitchen, so I picked a good handful of dwarf haricots for tonight's dinner as the SP is planning on cooking pork tenderloin medallions with a Dijon mushroom sauce, c'est magnifique!

Bringing the potager back to life

May was a funny old month weather wise, cold and wet for the most part and not conducive to working outdoors in my potager garden or even to sowing seeds in pots ready for warmer days to arrive.
However, the last day of May dawned warm and sunny and my thoughts turned to all things veggie, a trip to the garden centre was called for.

After a leisurely breakfast (it was a Saturday after all) and good long walk for M'selle Fleur we headed down to the Jardin 'Elle for some retail therapy of the plant variety.

As you'll already be aware, I'm sure, in a few short days from now here in Normandy we will be celebrating the 70th Anniversary of the D Day landings and everywhere one looks you can see preparations being made to welcome the veterans and their families at this special time.
Even the gardeners at Jardin d'Elle are not immune it seems!

The Senior Partner grabbed a trolley and we headed for the "potager" section of this vast place. Despite his "so called" aversion to anything that looks or sounds like a courgette Mr B was soon pointing out varieties of both zucchini and squash for us to try and very soon we had quite a collection of both.

We also stocked up with lettuce seedlings and pots of herbs: thyme, lemon thyme and wonderful basil.

I can't visit Jardin d'Elle without wandering around the outdoor spaces and I always linger amongst the roses.

Meanwhile Mr B was tired from all the decision making and decided to rest awhile in this very comfortable looking swing seat.

Happy Birthday, sweetie. 67 today!

Back home I couldn't wait to get started and began planting out whilst Mr B got on with cutting the grass.

These are the best gardening shoes ever, Mary Jane Crocs, they laugh in the face of unwieldy hosepipes!

After all the hard labour neither of us could face making dinner so there was only one solution, pizza!

A takeaway treat that recently became available to us when a couple of entrepreneurs opened up this "pizza hut" in their front garden just a 5 minute drive away from here.

Pizza Hut - Normandy style

bon dimanche a tous.....................................

Sharing this post with Cindy who hosts

Amaze Me Mondays 

on her delightful blog "Dwellings - the heart of your home" 

which I discovered through my lovely friend Sarah @ Hyacinths For The Soul 

Sunday walk and other delights

The Normandy countryside is awakening to spring, at last, and I decided earlier in the week that it was safe to start sowing some veggie seeds in propagators ready to plant out into the potager in a couple of months time.

Whilst we were in UK last month I went overboard at the garden centre and stocked up on many different varieties of salads, tomatoes and courgettes but when I went looking for said seed packets they were nowhere to be found. After three days of fruitless searching the SP finally found them hidden in plain sight in one of the storerooms outside, how I'd missed seeing the bright green plastic bag that they were in I have no idea, but hey! I was sooooooooo glad they'd finally been found.

I took these shots whilst on our walk today.

Jacques new lambs

ajonc

wild purple orchids, can you see their spotted foliage

stream bank full of primroses

It's not just the countryside that's waking up, the Brocante season began this weekend, vendors selling all types of second hand, vintage and antiques items filled the St Clair car parks with their stalls.

this young man looks cold and bored!

assorted bric a brac

anyone lost a wheel off their wagon?

there's always a piece of Vallauris pottery on one of the stalls!

We slowly walked around looking at pottery (I'm always hopeful that one day I'll find a rare piece of Quimper) but I only came away with this book.

A Grammaire Anglaise dating from 1907 which cost the princely sum of one euro!

Leafing through it's water stained pages I think it will be a useful addition to my book shelf that's if I don't scrap it for an altered book project!

bon dimanche............