The garden the day we arrived
A lot of hard work and sore fingers eight weeks later on“Ow my back hurts”
“Well my knees are aching”
“Look at the cuts on my finger”
“Well my fingers are going blue”.
We sounded like the British Olympic Team after they ran the relay race, but in fact we are the triumphant gardeners who have now laid drip irrigation throughout the entire back garden, and in this way, we can sit on the terrace as the sun goes down, sipping a nice local vintage, while the garden waters itself. I must explain that you get sore fingers from pressing in the hundreds of little sprinklers which must be pushed into the irrigation pipe. Definitely a double layer of sticking plaster job which needs a great deal of good humour, and SHOUTING DOESN"T HELP!
“Well my knees are aching”
“Look at the cuts on my finger”
“Well my fingers are going blue”.
We sounded like the British Olympic Team after they ran the relay race, but in fact we are the triumphant gardeners who have now laid drip irrigation throughout the entire back garden, and in this way, we can sit on the terrace as the sun goes down, sipping a nice local vintage, while the garden waters itself. I must explain that you get sore fingers from pressing in the hundreds of little sprinklers which must be pushed into the irrigation pipe. Definitely a double layer of sticking plaster job which needs a great deal of good humour, and SHOUTING DOESN"T HELP!
At least we had a break this morning when we ran out of widgets and had to go to see Leroy Merlin to re-stock. We didn't bother to get changed and we definitely looked as though we had come straight from work.
You can see from the photos what we started out with, and here we are less than eight weeks later with it all under control. I must confess that the fact that Papy had 85% of the garden buried under six inches of concrete has helped us as we certainly don’t get delayed with lawns that need mowing or paths that need weeding.
I am studying the art of container gardening and have visions of the courtyard being ablaze with multi-colours of geraniums next summer, and before that, being filled with endless pots of hyacinths and crocuses. With five hundred hyacinths to plant, I am quite sure I can get one of the little darlings to come up smelling sweetly.
Tonight we are going over the garden wall on another forage for horse pooh. We found that once we had laid all the irrigation pipe along the vegetable rows and then encircled each of the fruit trees and the four vines, that we had enough to run a couple of loops inside the big compost bin at the very back of the garden. I had explained earlier that it is a daft system whereby even if you get good compost, it is all buried at the very bottom and somewhat inaccessible. Our plan is to cover the existing compost with a good layer of soil mixed with horse pooh, keep it damp, shut the lids down and let it simmer, and see how many mushrooms we can get out of it.
Having just seen the news that the author who wrote the wonderful book “The Horse Whisperer” is terribly ill along with his whole family after they ate poisonous mushrooms while on holiday, I shall verify each one before consigning it to the frying pan, but on the whole we seem to get the Cep mushrooms which are very good. As I told you, we tried growing them on the farm under controlled circumstances, but to no avail, but we would find great rings of them out in the grazing lands, and mushroom soup was always a good winter standby.
Today is a cloudy, breezy, slightly cooler day and we even had to retreat to the terrace for lunch as it was spattering with rain. Jean says that any cloud that crosses the coastline is promptly bombarded with rockets to stop it developing, and consequently, although the weather forecasters tell you that rain is coming, clearly the guys who have the wine farmers interests at heart can change all that.
On a technical note, I have been receiving some rather frustrated emails from people who have wanted to put comments onto the Blog but who battle to find their way through the process. It seems as though the best route is to put them on under Anonymous. Sadly I don’t get to know who is writing, but I do enjoy reading them. If anyone would like to contact me directly, you can email me at cmfagalde@yahoo.co.uk.
You can see from the photos what we started out with, and here we are less than eight weeks later with it all under control. I must confess that the fact that Papy had 85% of the garden buried under six inches of concrete has helped us as we certainly don’t get delayed with lawns that need mowing or paths that need weeding.
I am studying the art of container gardening and have visions of the courtyard being ablaze with multi-colours of geraniums next summer, and before that, being filled with endless pots of hyacinths and crocuses. With five hundred hyacinths to plant, I am quite sure I can get one of the little darlings to come up smelling sweetly.
Tonight we are going over the garden wall on another forage for horse pooh. We found that once we had laid all the irrigation pipe along the vegetable rows and then encircled each of the fruit trees and the four vines, that we had enough to run a couple of loops inside the big compost bin at the very back of the garden. I had explained earlier that it is a daft system whereby even if you get good compost, it is all buried at the very bottom and somewhat inaccessible. Our plan is to cover the existing compost with a good layer of soil mixed with horse pooh, keep it damp, shut the lids down and let it simmer, and see how many mushrooms we can get out of it.
Having just seen the news that the author who wrote the wonderful book “The Horse Whisperer” is terribly ill along with his whole family after they ate poisonous mushrooms while on holiday, I shall verify each one before consigning it to the frying pan, but on the whole we seem to get the Cep mushrooms which are very good. As I told you, we tried growing them on the farm under controlled circumstances, but to no avail, but we would find great rings of them out in the grazing lands, and mushroom soup was always a good winter standby.
Today is a cloudy, breezy, slightly cooler day and we even had to retreat to the terrace for lunch as it was spattering with rain. Jean says that any cloud that crosses the coastline is promptly bombarded with rockets to stop it developing, and consequently, although the weather forecasters tell you that rain is coming, clearly the guys who have the wine farmers interests at heart can change all that.
On a technical note, I have been receiving some rather frustrated emails from people who have wanted to put comments onto the Blog but who battle to find their way through the process. It seems as though the best route is to put them on under Anonymous. Sadly I don’t get to know who is writing, but I do enjoy reading them. If anyone would like to contact me directly, you can email me at cmfagalde@yahoo.co.uk.
Several people have asked about the book that I wrote entitled “Lambs Love and Laughter” which was the account of the seven years that Jean and I spent re-building the derelict farm in South Africa. This can be found on http://lambsloveandlaughter.blogspot.com/
If you read this, you will see how we come to be so handy with a pair of pliers, a hammer and a length of string!
Another route to some of my writing can be found on my website at http://www.fagalde.co.uk/
Here you can access the account of our five years in Florida entitled “Midhurst to Miami”, and there are a number of photos of the farm, plus links to the various books that I have written.
We were sitting in the Bank Mangers office the other day and he was leafing through my passport while waiting for his computer to spit out some information, and I could see his eyes becoming wider as he saw names like Benin, Chile, Mauritius, Australia, Canada, USA, England, France, South Africa, Senegal, Panama, Portugal, Peru and Ecuador. In retrospect, I really am rather glad that I can now sit on our terrace in southern France and not have to pack my suitcases for quite a while (unless you count my upcoming ten euro trip to England!)
No comments:
Post a Comment