View From The Balcony Autumn 2020

Our front balcony entrance brings so much enjoyment, and not only to us but also to Eli the Cat who shows his appreciation for the doormat every chance he gets.

I love leaning over the railing to check out the front garden. The flowering shrubs in the upper right corner of the below photo are two abelia, beloved by bees.  When I recently did my afternoon exercise walk around the garden the other day, I got to see a HUGE bee all on his lonesome, probably belonging to the Megachilidae family, thrusting its upper body into one of the tubular flowers. 

The meandering brick path flanks the part of the garden situated between the entrance walk and the driveway. The aucuba was propagated from plants already present when we moved here ten years ago. Its evergreen, shade-loving, glossy, substantial leaves splashed with gold flourish in a spot facing north, brightening up that dark corner.

The balcony wraps itself partially around the eastern side of our home. Access to the balcony from the inside is facilitated by not only the foyer door but also two living-room French doors. Presently asters are the dominant blooms from that perspective.

While on the side balcony if one turns towards the south, the rest of the eastern planting with its ivy-covered wall can be seen as it continues into the back garden. Eli the Cat stands guard at various points along the eastern perimeter, mesmerised by sounds coming from the plants' direction, mostly made by insects and the wind.

Once back on the ground, going around the southeast corner of the house brings you to the south-facing back garden with its patio and ivy-covered pergola. The pergola-facing potting room is in the sous-sol (our home is a pavillon sur sous-sol, that is, the living quarters are on the top floor; downstairs houses the unheated garage, utility/storage room, potting/mud rooms, and cellier). The temperature is now cold enough for all the frost-tender potted plants to spend at least the nights inside the sous-sol, near the potting room's window, including the tuberous begonia which is spending the day on the table under the pergola.

It is still flowering but will start shedding leaves fairly soon, feeding its tuber, hopefully giving us a fifth year of flowers starting in June and going all the way to November.

Other frost-tender potted plants that need to be sheltered at least during the night are calendula . . .

. . . bougainvillea, osteospermum, and lantana. If successfully over-wintered, they will bloom outdoors once again.

When gardening most days, I wear woolen hats to keep my noggin warm. The summer jobbies are in the mud room biding their time.

À la prochaine!

Gardening in the Time of Covid-19, Part III: Returning Sounds, Sights & Smells of Nature

On the 45th day of lockdown (Confinement Jour 45), I find myself sitting under our urban garden's ivy-covered pergola to rest after completing a garden task, realising though always pleasant, it is even more so. Birdsong has little competition from traffic noise. True now as before, after a rain, petrichor permeates throughout, but at present, before the rain and its fragrant aftermath, the air is already wonderfully fresh.

Looking through the sous sol's potting room's window with its coloured glass bottle collection towards the ivy-covered pergola

Then there are the moles. One of their many dirt volcanoes can be seen in the below photo's upper right corner. Why have they entrenched themselves for the first time in the ten years since our arrival? My guess is the lockdown-related decrease in vibrations caused by street traffic including fewer trucks rumbling down one long side of our garden flanking a refrigeration depot's entrance has attracted these industrious soil diggers. After some research I have concluded there are three perspectives on having garden moles:

1) Get rid of these dangerous, disease-carrying, dirt-dragons/rodents as quickly as possible with poison. (Call our extermination service for an estimate.)

2) Be humane to both these annoying critters and your lawn. Trap and release them. (Where? Regardless of the lockdown, if released they will either come back or bother someone else.)

3) Co-exist. They bring benefits too like aerating the soil (those mounds of theirs are excellent with which to top up veggie beds), eating tons of detrimental grubs, and fertilising the soil. As our 'lawn' is mostly English daises and moss, and their mounds though plentiful are not disturbing the roots of bushes and plants, this perspective has become mine.

Centre: osteospermum; heucheras of varying hues: clockwise, paprika, Georgia peach & tirasmu; lavender pot: lantana

This past late winter, an acquaintance of The Calm One gave us many a potted miniature rose. At that time, the floral donation was leafless. All got a good pruning. Then I had to wait a few months to see what colour blooms they would have. Out of around fifteen, only a couple have not yet set flowers. I do not know the different varieties' names, but they are all beauties soaking up the sun on sous sol window sills facing south. During the growing season, each gets sprayed for blackspot monthly and have a few drops of liquid fertiliser added to the watering can almost daily.

Here's a close up of a deep-pink one.

And of a tiny white rose.

Also of a gorgeous coral-coloured bloom.

A tub of two turned out to have deep red, quartered roses. Such flowers look fantastic against a complementary background of deep green, so it is now fronting a patio cutout's calla lily thicket.

Such a beautifully formed rose!

That diminutive ruby stunner has big competition though. Outside the balcony entrance's front door, curving up high over the weigela, is a robust climber, Étoile de Hollande, fragrant beyond belief, so deeply red it can look almost black, and with a velvet sheen that is mesmerising.

Here's one huge, ruffled bloom.

À la prochaine!

Gardening In The Time of Covid-19, Part II: Resilience

Though resilience has always been part of my emotional and mental arsensal since childhood, it has never been more important than now as France enters its tenth day of lockdown. Research shows that elements of resilience can be cultivated, in other words, it's not just a personality trait. Adversity is an opportunity to further learn how to regulate emotions, keep cognition clear and solution-based, and to accomplish goals regardless. The kingdom of plants has held me in thrall from earliest memory. Their flexibility despite being sessile, that is, fixed-in-place, astounds and is one of the attractions gardening holds for me. If the winds buffets them, their elaborate chemistry ensures that their stems thicken to take on the challenge. Some marigold seedlings were started early and put in a cold frame to protect them against frosty overnight conditions, but during the day the tiny greenhouse is cracked open so the wind will encourage their delicate stems to strengthen.

Though fungi are not plants, they certainly are a presence in the garden. They are tough little things living off the fat of the land, like this small scarlet elf cap (Sarcoscypha coccinea) in the wild part of our garden, 'munching' on a dead twig, helping it to become soil. Being in a country with a high standard of living (plus a social safety net), believe you me, there's a lot of 'fat' available to keep us two from shopping and going out on a daily or even a weekly or longer basis. We are checking our immediate environment for ways to occupy and take care of ourselves while sheltering in place so as to keep all of us safe. It's sobering to realise how readily we have regarded superfluous activities and merchandise as necessary.

During the latter half of my forty-five-minute, twilight garden-romp yesterday, the air was filled with the enveloping sound of church bells ringing and ringing and ringing from all directions. I asked myself, has the Pope died, perhaps Macron? I finally conjectured that it had to do with some religious event. Later on, I found out that since Catholics couldn't celebrate Ascension at churches, bells instead were rung all over France to foster a sense of congregation. The below photo shows the part of my 'exercise track' flanking the wild area. I do various sized figure-eights by skirting around bushes, chairs, structures, the many terracotta-roofing-tile-framed parterres, and the driveway which is on a decline, all over the garden plus going up and down the steps leading to the entrance balcony. That blur of green jutting out from the photo's lower right is a plastic pot alerting me to the danger of my possibly becoming impaled in dim light on the double metal arch lying upon its side. The goal is to keep me healthy so I don't bother beleaguered medical staff not to cause a major commotion of someone arriving at the emergency room resembling a vampire who has met her end!

On today's morning, a cold, sunny one, my seeing that our bay laurels were covered in bright yellow flowers was a welcomed sight.

Ten years ago, they were fifteen centimetres/six-inch high seedlings, volunteers from a neighbor's hedge. They are much, much, much taller nowadays.

Their flowers are held in puffy clusters.

Our patio's pergola is covered partially with ivy which has grown up three of its pillars and is now spreading over its upper cross beams. Additionally, on the side facing the garden, it has cloaked a dead honeysuckle vine and a dying rose. With this abundance and structure, I say topiary is in order thusly the rose support is being shaped into a wishbone . . .

. . . and the honeysuckle support into a column topped with a heart.

The upper parts of the three pillars are being trimmed into rounded forms. I love the process of it, that is, their developing a monumental presence under my guidance.

Bearded irises are in full bloom. I put some in a vase near one of the sous sol windows; I shot the photo below from outside, capturing an almost watery reflection. One of the pergola's ivy-covered pillars and a terracotta-roofing-tile framed bed seem to be setting out gentle ripples.

À la prochaine!

RELATED LINKS

How the Pandemic Will End, an excellent Atlantic Monthly article by the very impressive science journalist, Ed Yong. (Paywall is suspended during the pandemic, but registering is required.)

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Is Anyone Else Just Barely Functioning Right Now?

Late Summer Garden 2019

There's a paradoxical edge in the air. The pervasive mellowness of late-summer laziness when much already has been harvested, specifically rhubarb, asparagus, peas, potatoes, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, and blackberries, is brushing against the beginning bustle of sowing for autumnal crops such as beets, carrots, kale, and tansy along with picking plus preserving peaches, plums, the second flush of raspberries, and figs. Watering and mowing chores are being replaced by weeding and clipping hedges such as ivy, laurel, and the wild area's brambles. Ivy covering walls/fences and pergola pillars gets about four trimmings per year chez nous. This one will be the last until late winter/early spring. When the cutting back is vigorous, dead leaves tucked deep into the vines will show. Through time they will flutter down on their own accord or be covered with new growth. This final trim was done a little too late as clusters of berries which sustain starlings through winter already had started developing so though some unfortunately got the axe, I made sure the ones up high were spared as on the ivy-covered wall in the below photo's bottom left-hand corner.

But the bustle is not exactly a bustle. Even it is pervaded with a sense if not exactly of laziness, then one of satiety with the promise of more to come. This halo of contentment hovering over our little city plot is reminiscent of the much larger one that floated over a farming community we visited about ten years ago south of Grenoble. In exchange of our being custodians for a century-old country property while their owners went abroad we got to spend two weeks during late August in an active agricultural setting.  The large house more in shambles than not is referred to on local maps as Le Chateau hence at one point in our stay a pair of hikers stared with confused disappointment over the chain-barred dirt road entrance at the rather dilapidated structure in process of being renovated. We made sure the horses got their daily water and the orchard's apples got picked and stored. As we hiked around fields dotted with bales of hay and walked through narrow village streets where workers were making sure roofs were in good repair for the coming winter, this dual sense of activity laced with satisfied fulfilment was everywhere. 

At the moment in our urban garden, there's a bumper crop of peaches! As I pick up the fragrant ones volunteering easy harvesting by their dropping to the ground, I hear neighbours' chickens clucking, clucking, clucking along, in their own feathery universe, bringing memories of our stay in that farming village where the sounds of domesticated animals were everywhere, from horses to cows, and of course chickens.

The fig harvest looks to be a record breaker also.

Beets still have a ways to go in developing their roots, but a few leaves here and there have been plucked to go into minestrone.

It's a common saying among gardeners that the best crop yield often is found on the compost heap. Ours at present is covered with squash and tomato plants.

The front garden's lavender, abelia, purple plum tree, and potted heather are bathed in flitting shadows cast by the much taller and still fully leaved cherry plum and box elder trees. Within a couple of months the shadowy dance will become more subdued once those trees start to shed their leaves.

Companions to the heather are a solar lamp and floppy, chartreuse echeveria. The succulent will put out welcomed, cheery, bright-yellow blooms in late winter.

Lavender cradles pink, low-growing dahlias.

It will get a clipping after flowering.

Deadheading regularly will keep dahlias blooming right into autumn like these lovely, single, red ones set in a dramatic background of yucca with its sword-shaped leaves.

À la prochaine!

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!