May has disappeared...

... in long, hot rainless days of gardening, and cleaning and ridding the cottage of our winter muddle so it's ready for friends this summer. And watering, more watering and yet more watering. This was not the year to plant a hot border, a hundred meter hedge and over a dozen young trees.  Hose pipes snake across the field and filled watering cans sit ready to grab at the sight of a wilting tree or shrub.

Our huge underground water tank has been a bitter disappointment.  In eager anticipation, following serious discussions in our local brico on which pump, piping and attachments we would need, we opened the tank to find no more than a muddy puddle in the bottom.  All the captured rain of the last two winters has leaked through the concrete walls.  We did not realise - our builders should have lined the tank to keep it waterproof. So with much gnashing of teeth and frustrated swearing, yet more evenings have been spent dragging hose pipes and lugging heavy cans.

We left our house, spotless cottage, trees, freshly planted pots and shrubs and Vita in the care of Guccio (elderly sad-eyed Spinone - he who hates thunder storms) and his master (who promised faithfully to water) while we slipped away to Poland for a week.

I expected grey post-communism and found vibrancy and colour, beautiful old churches and historic, cafe-filled town centres.  We drove from nearly down south (Cracow) to nearly up north (Gdansk), sight-see-ed 'til we dropped, ate like lords on traditional Polish dishes, stayed in elegant hotels, window-shopped in modern shopping centres, had afternoon tea with mouthwatering Polish cheesecake and took our lives into our hands as we played "chicken" with oncoming motorists past convoys of lorries nose to tail on busy, pot-holed single carriageways, while wishing that the miles of motorway under construction alongside were already finished.

We came back late (after a long drive from the airport north of Paris) to the warm dark of the French countryside, filled with the sound of crickets and frogs, to thriving plants and a dog who barely said "where've you been?" before she rushed off again to find her best playmate. We sat on the veranda and gossiped into the night.

As Sinatra sings:  "It's oh so nice to go trav'ling, but it's so much nicer to come home."

Wroclaw town centre

Cracow roof tops

Cracow - Basilica of the Virgin Mary

Wawel Castle, Cracow - Ancient Seat of Polish Kings

Carving in rock salt by miners - Wieliczka mine

 Poznan Town Centre

Poznan Baroque Church

Gdansk - Baltic Agate

Gdansk Street Musicians

Gdansk Woodland

Cafe Nightlife

Gucio and the thunder storms 

Nothing. Not a Drop

The météo promised a thunder storm yesterday. Little flashing symbols were shown on the chart for our area from about 11pm onwards.

Great, we need a good downpour.  I think it's rained twice in the whole month of April.

We had seen the promise of last night's rain on the graph for several days, so we thought it was a good moment (while things were still dry) to dislodge ourselves from the comfort of the cottage and move back into the house.  The First of May was spent trudging backwards and forwards with television, clothes, food, bedding, all our computer paraphernalia, bits of furniture.  Vita thought there was a danger we might forget to move her as well and so spent all day hurtling up and down the drive trying to make sure she was with us at all times.

As the day wore on we watched huge anvils of thunder clouds bank up on the horizon and congratulated ourselves on our prescience.  It would be a relief not to have to water, dragging hose pipes (probably strictly forbidden) across the field to water the hedge and the new trees and lugging watering can after watering can round the flower beds as I try to catch which shrubs are beginning to wilt. Most look remarkably healthy.  Amazing since the ground is rock hard and the only way any water gets through is via the cracks opening up in the clay.  Vita and Tod return with bone-dry feet from their early morning through-the-long-grass walks.

For the last two nights, we've had the faint rumbles of thunder and seen distant lightning flickering. Someone's getting the rain promised on the météo, but we've had nothing.  Not a drop!  So the water butt stays empty and I turn on the tap again.

We have a huge underground concrete tank down at the cottage holding two winters' rain water.  There is a small square concrete "lid" with two rusty hooks as handles and no means of getting the water out. Making use of the water has felt like a daunting task, but it's time to sort out pumps and hoses and connections. There's only "light rain" promised for this week and and no guarantee we'll actually get what's forecast.

Five Summers, Not Five Minutes

I'm an impatient gardener.

I want the ideas I have in my head translated to reality NOW.  And with the minimum of effort on my part.  I sigh when I look at all the jobs I have to do and how slow progress seems to be with all my various "projects" - most of them only half done.

Sometimes Nature just reminds me: all that is needed is time for the vision to become reality.

When we arrived five summers ago, there was a scrubby, stubby bush to one side of the lawn smothered in weeds. Full of dead or dying wood, it didn't look much.  There were a few reddish sticks with variegated leaves which helped me identify that it was a feeble cornus. So each spring I cut back the older stems, trimmed back the grass and weeds to let it breathe, dug out more of the dead stumps.

The bush is now at the centre of what will be a new bed of roses and wild orchids, with a small nectarine tree to one side.

This morning, as I walked back across the lawn towards the new bed, I suddenly realised: the scrubby, stubby old bush looks beautiful. Her silvery variegated leaves gleam in the morning sunlight.  Her red stems are long and straight and every tip holds a cluster of soon-to-be-opened flower buds.

It has taken five summers for her to reveal her full glory.

I walk ...

... to the sound of cuckoos and nightingales, eyes squinting against the low early morning sun, Vita a dark shape running ahead through the dew-silvered grass.

Feels like August, not April

We turn off the underfloor heating and open all the cottage doors and windows to try to catch a cooling breeze.

As I make supper, I watch Monsieur F planting his maize in the late afternoon sun.  His tractor kicks up dust and turns just beyond our lawn. We wave companionably to each other.

Black redstarts blunder in through open doors looking for nesting places and have to be coaxed gently out again, into the heat.

I wander up to the house to hunt for summer T-shirts and light weight trousers.  All my clothes in the cottage are meant for chilly days.

Nightingales sing in the shade of the woodland by the stream.

We open up the swimming pool, turning back the winter cover to reveal clear water.  Good.  As the temperature rises there is a risk that the pool goes green, but not this year.

Late spring flowers burst into colour and then fade too quickly.

We talk about moving back up to the house.  Suddenly its cool rooms and shady veranda feel welcoming.

Extreme Weeding

Weeding bores me.  The day to day tidy here, tidy there, type of gardening doesn't interest me.  Apart from anything else, all the weeds are back again the day after tomorrow, so it has to be done again.

But extreme weeding is different.  That's really satisfying.  The "nose down, crawling forward inch by inch, sore back and knees, weeds are taller than I am" type of weeding is really satisfying.

And this has been the week for it.  Rain every day and then Friday and Saturday glorious sunshine. So our sticky clay soil is still moist round the roots and an expert flick with the pronged weeding thingy and dandelions, couch grass, thistles, dock, and self-seeded rape are out of the ground in no time.

When we restored the cottage, the first task of the builders was to drive a hard surfaced road down what was a grass-covered green lane. In the brambles on the edge of Serge's field we found abandoned concrete telegraph poles and these were dragged forward and laid flat, end to end, to make a sharp edge to the new road. Through winter the weeds have been spreading over and through the concrete creating grassy mounds splashed with the gold of dandelion and buttercup flowers - a green carpet steadily spreading back out across the road surface. The green lane is re-establishing itself.  Friends suggest using weed killer.  But this offends my organic sensibilities. I'm tempted to leave it, but know that that would annoy Tod. So the weeds (at least here) have got to go.

Oh the satisfaction of standing up to ease an aching back and turning round to see behind me that weed-free clean edge of the concrete post nestling in the grit and pebbles at the side of the road!  Never mind that there's another seventy metres of road edge weeding still to do in front of me.  Extreme weeding rocks!

Spring Forward

After a week of endless sunshine, we put the clocks forward last night and we've woken to a rain-pouring, grey cold day.

We've friends coming to lunch and we decided it would be a good moment to have the meal up at the house.  We'd imagined lounging on the veranda, replete, in the late afternoon sun.  So we've been tidying the garden in their honour - mowing, weeding, strimming the edges. Now we're going to be huddling indoors in front of the Godin stove in the lounge and I have wellington-booted, back of the neck dripping journeys to make backwards and forwards between house and cottage. I must go up there now and turn on the radiators to take the chill off the dining room and lounge.

Ah well!  We need the rain.  I met Monsieur et Madame M. (he who sells us his wood) in Leclercs earlier in the week and they were shaking their heads at the weather, saying it was too warm and too dry.  It will be good for the new grass we've seeded and the young bushes and trees we've planted.  Just a shame that our guests won't be seeing them.

Slow Gardening

The sun has long disappeared behind the ridge of Monsieur F's field, but by the pale blue of the evening sky I can still see enough to tug at the brittle dry stems of fat hen and heave out yet more builders' rubble from the edge of the cottage lawn.

Here is where I want to make a "hot" border: yellows and deep oranges and clashing reds; dogwoods dug up from elsewhere in the garden and transplanted to add structure between the scattered seeds of achillea, marigolds, echinacea, dark poppies and hollyhocks and golden sunflowers to echo those planted in distant fields.

Vita stands on the edge of the bank, nose to the ground waiting for the scurrying of small rodents.  When bored she comes offering to dig where I am working.

In my mind's eye I can see the border finished, full of colour in the heat of a late summer's afternoon.  For now though, it's just Vita and I on a muddy weed-covered bank in the fading light of a spring evening.