Girl and Garden

When I came to France, I said I would not try to have an English garden... I felt it would be too much too manage in a warmer (huh!) climate and take up a lot of time. I wanted trees and long grass with wild flowers. Sounds great, yes? Well the reality is somewhat different. The weather here is similar to Britain - warmer generally speaking - but not hugely - and with lots (and I mean lots!) of rain. Grass grows at a rate of knots and the wildflowers that grow in it are not quite as pretty as I fondly imagined: dandelions, docks, nettles - rather than poppies and tall daisies blowing gently in the balmy breeze.

So I got some trees and shrubs which Jason put in for me:

and bit by bit I seemed to accumulate other plants. So, in the end I had to dig up some of the grass to make a bed to put the plants in before they died in their pots:















...but still there seemed to be more pots, so the bed had to be widened. And that's what I've been doing this afternoon!















This is the first border... I have the feeling it will not be the last.

It seems you can take the girl out of the garden, but you can't take the garden out of the girl.