A Frosty Morn Delights

Frost is captivating. When looked at from afar, it relaxes the mind, slowing down a zigzag of pesky thoughts enough to get to the point of wanting to go on out and get close to it. The laundry can wait. And that goes for checking email too.

Solid ice in the bird bath is thumped out of its giant plant saucer. Shards lay gleaming on the frosted grass; the bath gets filled with fresh water.

Nothing showcases ice better than the hot pink of penstemon.

There's wind ready and willing to disseminate a dandelion's pollen, but the pollen says not right this moment, but thanks anyway.

A paprika heuchera stuns with picot edging of delicate lace along with a piqué interior of dots. 

A dried sedum clustered flowerhead's swaying in the wind on leggy stems isn't hampered by a newly acquired coat of rime.

Solar lamps encrusted with white accentuate the geometrical purity of a circle and a diamond.

Within sweet alyssum's flowerhead each tiny bloom bears a close resemblance to candied violets.

Weak, wintry sunshine washes over thawed Queen Elizabeth hedge roses facing east in the front garden, fading the vibrant colour into one of old, tattered, salmon-coloured silk.

Pots of lobelia adorning a series of sous sol window sills facing west are still holding onto their blooms since June! Their icy blue fits right in.

À la prochaine!

RELATED LINKS

How frost can harm and help your garden

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!

Summer Break 2018

Frenzied spring gardening has morphed into mostly watering and pulling some beets and carrots from time to time. 

Front garden / foreground: lavender, plum tree, abelia, shasta daisies, spirea; background: asters, Japanese anemones, ivy, rose of Sharon

So there's lots of time available to lounge under our ivy-covered pergola overlooking the potager while consuming vats of Banana Agua Fresca (recipe) as temperatures approach 36 degrees C (97 degrees F) in the coming week . . .

. . . and reading these books (reviews to follow) as summer unfolds:

Notorious RBG: The Life And Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg by Irin Carmon

Against Empathy: The Case For Rational Compassion by Paul Bloom

The Intimacies Of Four Continents by Lisa Lowe

The Calm One recently got us some solar lamps. They are lovely on their own, but with a full moon and stars blinking in a clear night sky overhead, all is enchanted.

View is from the back of the garden towards the patio

May your beaux jours (literal translation: beautiful days, that is, summer) be enjoyable, interesting, and most of all relaxing! Souped-up Garden will return in August.