High Summer 2020

A fresh spring garden, all bright green and friendly, became a lush summer solstice one which is now becoming a glorious mature profusion but not surprisingly showing signs of wear and tear. Watering, weeding, and deadheading will prolong the abundance for a while.

There are three large pots of orange/yellow calendula and deepest blue lobelia, all sowed from seed, throughout our garden. They did need to be sprayed with sulfur to combat a fungal disease called calendula smut. And they may need to be dosed again in order for them to continue flowering all through summer.

For years now social media images of a pot on its side spilling out lobelia visually simulating a small stream intriqued me, and this was the summer I finally got around realising this clever concept.

The 'stream' flows amidst cannas and dahlias. I love it so. It was just a matter of burying one quarter of the depth of an empty pot put on its side, filling it one thirds with soil, and planting by laying the roots laterally with the flowers placed beyond the pot's opening before topping up with more soil. 

It is now the fourth summer that this fragrant tuberous begonia has graced a small sous sol window sill. I hope it will bloom yet again in 2021.

Pots of miniature roses have found their home in a large tub along with a blueberry bush. In this way, not only does the display look full, when the roses are watered/fertilised so is the blueberry!

Hydrangeas are now fading into glorious subtle tones/texture and by autumn will become much like silver lace which always is a treat to behold.

The ivy topiary heart is being shaped gradually.  I just love it! Sculpting greenery is fun and gives so much joy. The structure on which it grows is a thick honeysuckle trunk that gave up the ghost nearly a decade ago. Requiring both patience and decisiveness makes topiary quite a learning experience.

Beets are putting out foliage which when thinned are added to minestrone.

Green beans are flowering. Soon tiny pods will appear and in several weeks they will be ready for picking.

À la prochaine!

Easing Into Late Summer 2019

All that frenzied, early morning watering done during the canicules (heatwaves), one in June, the other in July, paid off. The garden has held on to most of its lushness. The basket of lobelia which was sowed early spring still captivates as it moves gently with the breeze under the pergola and looks that it will remain doing so through August and September. Perhaps a moderate trim, about one third up from the bottom, will be in order to keep it looking fresh.

Sitting in the pergola's low recliner enables my seeing a nice slice of sky framed between two spruces located on a neighbouring business property and the tops of two pots, each placed on an upturned urn, flanking the start of our back garden's central path.

The pot closest to me is one of black-eyed Susan vine nestled in a rose of Sharon which self-seeded very close to an ivy-covered pillar. A much more robust rose of Sharon is in the right-hand corner of the below photo.

After doing some strenuous gardening like digging up two sunny beds of mid-season Rosabelle potatoes (yellow flesh, pink skin, all-purpose), I rush to the shady pergola and collapse on a lounge chair, removing my sun-protection gear of hat and glasses.

As I catch my breath and cool off with a glass of iced coffee, I can see the lovely blue and green glass balls placed in the blueberry pot situated across from me on the sunny part of the patio. They are hand blown and originally were used to float fishing nets. The blue one most likely is from Norway and the green one from Japan. The former was bought in a Grenoble flea market twenty years ago and the latter from an Oregon shop ten years earlier than its Norwegian companion. Both of these breakaway floats took decades to reach French and American shores. They managed not to shatter during our many relocations. This was the season they were liberated from a dusty sous sol corner, cobwebs wiped off, and washed with the garden hose. They are happy and so am I.

Part of my rest is an amble around the house.  The pergola flanks the west side, so up I go and say hello to pots of lobelia on a series of grilled sous sol window sills.

Making a sharp turn at an intersection of the side and front gardens, I mosey on up the front stairs leading to the entrance balcony. On the way I stoop to get a whiff of the fragrant, cascading tuberous begonia comfy on a small sous sol window sill.

Onto the balcony where pots of lobelia and Japanese holly are doing well.

The lobelia is flourishing in its big container.

Back down the stairs I go and make a sharp right onto the small, undulating path just shy of the overhanging balcony where I see late-blooming lavender 'Hidcote Giant' on the left and a pink hydrangea on the right. This lavender is much taller than 'Hidcote' which finished putting out its blue spikes a month ago. The taller variety hasn't bloomed much since our arrival ten years ago. I had blamed the dearth of flowers on its somewhat shady location. Since I started watering consistently and everywhere last summer, boy, what a flower display this month of August! Almost as abundant as the shorter bushes. Don't ever underestimate the power of water for a garden. Further down, across the driveway, is a potted collection of shade-loving gardenia, tuberous begonia, hellebore, and various heucheras with differently coloured foliage from lime green to paprika sheltering themselves from the sun under a cherry plum tree and a box elder. Mostly shady, that is, until late afternoon, when that spot gets a sudden burst of short-lived sunlight.

À la prochaine!

RELATED LINK

Glass From The Past | Fishing Floats Documentary

Early Summer Garden 2019

Though the weather is cooler than the recent Official Canicule (heat wave), it's still HOT. Therefore I am watering the garden daily in the early morning and seeking refuge under the pergola along with a hanging basket of multi-hued lobelia or in our house. Your house you say? Yes, it stays cool because of our keeping to the recommended protocol for stone houses: keep both shutters and windows closed during the day but at night while keeping the shutters closed, open the windows.

The delicate blooms of lobelia present themselves as a flurry of stars or fireflies or dust motes in a sun beam depending upon flights of imagination. They flutter overhead as we recline in lounge chairs made even more cushiony with throw pillows. That basket was gifted to me more a quarter of century ago, tagged along with us from country to country, until this spring when I noted there was a suitable hook already securely fixed to one of the pergola overhead beams which jogged my memory of the basket, now covered with cobwebs in the sous sol and sans the original chains. I went ahead and sowed shade-loving lobelia indoors late winter thinking I could make do with cord instead of chains. The material I used broke, the rope The Calm One then strung up didn't, but he thought that it would eventually break so he trotted off to the local DIY place and got some chains. It was worth every bit of trouble as it is just sublime to see.

After preparing a bed for sowing carrots, I rushed to the pergola for some relief, removing my hat to let the breeze have its way with my hair, and sipped some iced coffee.

Across the way, sitting on the uncovered part of the patio, is a pot of black-eyed Susan vine (Thunbergia alata) and a bordeaux-red ivy geranium which is waiting to be placed out in the front garden when it has filled out enough.

Down the central path, on the right, is the sprawling blackberry bush. It needed to be staked and now the berries are no longer brushing the grass so they won't rot or get mowed down before I can pick them. I see a blackberry roly poly⁠—shortcake dough brushed with butter and spread with sugared berries, rolled up, topped with more berries, baked, and served with whipped cream⁠—in its future.

The strawberry patch has slowed down considerably but is still putting out a dessert bowl of berries weekly.

Daylilies are called that because each bloom lasts just a day, but look at the number of buds! This variety's name is El Desperado. It has golden yellow flowers with a burgundy centre and edge.

Another daylily, a potted Stella de Oro which is a reblooming variety, is keeping an equally golden Thunbergia alata company on a double sous sol window sill. It's good they both can take on a full frontal sun, because that window faces south. The tuteur is one of the old dried seed pods stuck on sticks that we found stored in a wood cupboard under the indoors barbecue. If that hanging basket can be brought to life, so can these sticks!

The hydrangea on the other hand is tucked in the front garden which faces north. It's just as happy as its sun-loving peers. I appreciate that aspect of gardening so much, that is, finding the right place so each plant can thrive.

Another golden sun worshiper is this rose.

À la prochaine!

Midwinter Garden 2019 Part 2

Just after I sowed a pea bed, frosty winds came bearing down, so before twilight deepened any further, the bed got a cozy horticultural fleece tucked snugly around it. This morning, the cover was stiff with ice. Here's hoping the shallowly planted pea seeds are still viable.

One of the first perennial food crops that gets attention is asparagus. A violet-tinged spear tip here and there means their patch needs some work.

Since the six-year old asparagus planting lustily overgrown its original border of terracotta roofing tiles, the tiles have been removed hence I am in process of digging a trench around the bed, heaping the displaced soil onto the bed itself. Heaped soil is great for asparagus by keeping the bottom of their stalks in the dark, thus blanching them a bit.

Moss fills the space between lichen-covered pavers.

You would be forgiven if you mistook these glorious skeletons of hydrangeas as a flurry of glasswing butterflies.

Lamium galeobdolon—one of its several common names is yellow weasel snout (!)—has turned its veins burgundy.

A cyclamen unfurls a burst of crimson, laughing at the wind and the cold.

Shade-loving, fragrant sweet violets have spread along the west side of the house forming a carpet because of their powerful way of seed dispersal: their pods snap open, injecting seeds far and wide.

A pop of yellow is always welcome. Thanks, stonecrop!

Each year, I keep adding what is regarded in horticultural jargon as green bones. We talkin' evergreen. One of the older and venerable 'bones' is this yucca which spent the first half of its twenty years in a pot on a Grenoble balcony and the second half in Angoulême soil. It now has several trunks and is close to my height.

À la prochaine!

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  Diana Studer

  Will you change from G+ comments on your blog? That is going to sunset too.
  
  I nurture one pot of violets.

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  Michelle Beissel

  +Diana Studer , if Google allows the maintaining of past comments, then since I hardly get comments outside of G+, I'll opt for the status quo as I really love re-reading old G+ comments when I check past posts (my blog is my recipe book). If not, then all those comments will disappear and that would be sad. Yay for that pot of violets!

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  Diana Studer+1

  I think the G+ comments will disappear. But there has been NO feedback from Google.
  Maybe edit the comments you value into the text of the blog post? (Which is what I did when I edited posts from my former blog to the current one)

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  Michelle Beissel+1

  +Diana Studer , excellent idea. Thanks!

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  Diana Studer+1

  and do it soonish ... they keep jumping the date forward!

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  Kim Quinn+1

  The hydrangea leaves are so beautiful! I enjoy your posts so much and keep 2 small garden beds, 3x6 and 3x8. They were allowed to rest this past year with a cover crop of hairy vetch, clover, tillage radishes (pods on stems, yummy!) and supposedly field peas. Never saw any of those. It was mixed in April and broadcast over and just whacked 3 or 4 times through the summer when it hit knee height. Now, I am dreaming of herbs, Kale, chard, tomatoes herbsherbsherbs. Wish I had a bona-fide rosemary hedge!💜

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  Michelle Beissel

  +Kim Quinn , thank you so much!
  
  Your garden interface sounds wonderful (I enjoy whacking cover crops, too). Keep dreaming (and doing). Rosemary is easy to propagate so all you need is a starter plant. If you run out of soil, and you have some cemented area, you can make a potted hedge.

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Diana Studer

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We have a potted hedge on two sides of our kitchen patio. Third side is an in the ground planter (and the fourth is garden) Ours is spekboom Portulacaria afra (which is also edible in salad, a different taste and texture)