Springtime garden

I love this time of the year when everything starts to wake up after being dormant during the long winter months. I've just been wandering around the garden seeing what's growing and what's not, also what needs to be moved because it doesn't like where it is, or I think it would look better somewhere else.

I could never call myself a real gardener, I love my garden, but I don't let it rule me. I don't talk to my plants, well maybe sometimes, telling them they have 2 chances in life... 'they either grow or they go..
 I let the weeds that flower stay, if I like them, you might say I'm a lazy gardener, but who has the right to say a plant is a weed. if it happens to grow somewhere that's not choking the special plant I have planted then it can stay. The only no go in my garden is I like the grass to be green, I don't like daises or dandelions to sneak in and this year we have an abundance of dandelions growing in all the fields around where we live.

If you read my last post  you will have seen them everywhere, but that's OK as long as they stay put in the fields.
I'm going away in a few days so would you like to see what my garden is looking like at the moment.

One of the many Pieris ( Forest Flame )
Always gives colour throughout the year.

Japonica Japanese Quince

Alyssum ( Saxitile )

Flowers first from April to June, cut back after flowering

then the leaves are a lovely silver grey

forming a good ground cover.

 I hope I don't miss too many things, the Peonies are about to burst into bloom,  if it rains a lot while we're away and we have wind they soon get damaged ,so fingers crossed they'll still be here when I get back.

The Roses are beginning to grow again after the late snow & frost damaging them.

Today I've been splitting and moving the ornamental grass's a friend gave me, I hope it will look as good in it's new home as it did last year.I'll show you that when it's growing, as it's still at the stubble stage.

 I didn't realise it would grow so tall and spread so much. I hope it will be happy where I've put it, as it was hard work digging it up, I had to get help from my other half to dig the holes to replant them. I feel much happier now going away, knowing they will be able to start growing in their new place as it would be too late to move them when I get back. Did I just say I don't let my garden rule me, well maybe I do occasionally.

 The terrace with lots of young plants in pots waiting to go in the garden.

They'll have to wait a little while longer.

We love this area especially for summer evenings.

A few herbs.
Which I always keep in pots near to the kitchen.

Lavender cuttings waiting to go into the Lavender bed

Choisya ( Mexican Orange Blossom )
This will probably be in full bloom when we return.

The Last of the Tulips.

Sempervivum ( succulents )
Which grow out of the crannies in the rockeries.

I put this photo in as I wanted you to see the sweet little viola  that popped up all by itself.
The seed must have come from a flower pot that was there last year .

I've sown seeds in trays and never had success growing them on.

After my busy day making sure everything was able to look after itself during my absence,

 I took several pictures of the sky.  It's amazing how quickly the sun went down.

I'll be back in a couple of weeks and then I'll show you where I've been.

It won't be as warm as it here in France, but it's a beautiful country.
Just a little clue ! it's my favourite place to visit as my son and his lovely wife & grandchildren live there.

à bientôt

Barbara Lilian.

A country garden in France.

Our daughter dreams of one day having the time to make a garden & being able to find time to look after it. But having just spent a week at her home, I wandered around and saw such lovely focal points she never gets the time to enjoy.

So as my hubby had just bought himself a new camera, which does a lot more than my point & shoot, I took lots of photos, so sit back and enjoy my wander around her garden seeing it through my eyes.

 

Don't ask me why the chair was left in the 'potager'.

But I thought it deserved a photo to share.

A slow maturing Willow tree.
This is where her boys play rugby or football.

The boys bikes outside of the barn.
Probably left there till the next time they ride them.

Pretty wild flowers growing in the disused veg. patch.

The swing the boys used to play on when they were younger,
still hanging on one chain from a branch of a huge Chestnut tree.

The cockeral & his lady followers left free to roam.
These have recently replaced the previous batch,
 that one by one were attacked by a fox !!

The driveway leading to the house.
 A lovely variety  of trees.

A lovely typical cottage feel
Some of the Hollyhocks in front of the shutters.

The Walnut and Cherry trees, making a pleasant shady area
where we've enjoyed many meals shared with family & friends.

Buddlia shrub or more often known as a butterfly bush.

An arbour made from an old ladder which had been left in the barn
 when they bought their house.
 It did have roses growing on either side, but the Deer must have eaten them !

 

An old wire crate, where there had been wild strawberries growing in it.

 

The old well which has had doors put on

 to save any accidents when the boys were little.

So as you have seen, every garden has it's charm and doesn't have to be flowers all planted neatly in rows.

I love this garden, and hope you enjoyed sharing my photos.

 and when my daughter sees this, I hope she will enjoy seeing all the

 charmimg parts of her garden that she doesn't get time to see

 because she is so busy with her work.

I hope you will pop by again, when I hope to have had time to visit my friends garden.

A bientot

 Barbara Lilian.

Indoors wth a Home and Garden magazine.

It's really April showers weather in my corner of France. I'd hoped to do all sorts in the garden, but now at my age I only work outside when it's NOT raining. Gone are the days when I'd be a busy Bee doing things like there was no tomorrow. So I've spent some time indoors browsing through some of my old magazines. One in particular it's Danish, unfortunately I can only look at the pictures but the decorating ideas from other peoples homes are so lovely it's well worth it. I usualy bring it back with me when we go to visit our grandchildren. http://www.isabellas.dk/

Isabellas magazine

The wild flowers in the garden, are just as pretty as the cultivated ones.

This morning having taken a stroll around the garden & the field, I found so many pretty wild flowers. I thought I'd share them by posting a few photos.
When I lived in England it was'nt considered a proper garden if the weeds were left to flower, however since I've lived here in the countryside of France, our house which was once a barn being part of a small farm it's literally in the middle of farm land, so really it's  plonked in the middle of a field.
I needed to change the way I thought about my garden. Now I let all the wild flowers grow in abundence, woe betide if my husband dares to put a blade any where near them untill they are past their best.
I was excited to find the first blue bells down by the stream not many yet; but hopefully the river banks will soon be a mass of blue & yellow from the Marsh-marigolds & the Yellow Iris . But the best find was some Cow-slips, I haven't seen them near my house before. But the scent that thrilled me the most came from the wild Violets. People do say the wild ones don't have any perfume, well they need to visit the French country-side.

I know we are not supposed to pick the wild flowers, but as they were growing on my land, I felt I had the right & was privileged to be able to do so.

 A posy of wild flowers from the field in a 'Tasse de Cafe'

The Cow- slips

A Carpet of wild Violets in the banks.

The Common Dandelion

when you look at the form of the petals it's  a very pretty flower.

As we say, 'Wet the bed' but known as 'Pissenlit' in French !

Welcome to the 1st page of my new blog.

Welcome to my blog. As yet I'm not quite sure what path it will folow, as I dabble in so so many things ...    at the moment being Springtime my priority is the garden, so the watercolour painting has gone on hold, but there's always meals to be cooked & cakes & puddings to be baked. A gift for someone, so that's usualy a quick cross stitch or a patchwork item sometimes a pretty posy from the flowers in the garden or wild flowers from our field. So I hope amongst some of my interests you might find something you like, if not on the 1st visit maybe another time.

When I started to learn water colour painting late in my life, I began to search on the internet & after reading several blogs & signing up to the ones I really liked; I became more interested  in blogging or whatever one calls it ! I had always said, 'why would anyone ever want to read about what other people are doing' Well that's what I've been doing, so now I've decided to make a blog of my own. I don't know if anyone will be interested in what I do, have done or would like to do, but whatever.. here goes & even if no one logs onto my blog to have a peep, I will have a collection of my memories for my Grandchildren to read when I'm gone.

I don't know how often I will be posting things on it, that will depend on the spare time I can find in between the new garden project I am helping my lovely husband create. I am the planner/designer of the project & he is the do-er. Plus all the other 101 things I have on the go (probably like most of you out there) The rest of the garden is badly in need of some TLC which was badly hit this winter by the really low temp. & very hard frosts we experienced. We lost so many shrubs, I'm not sure where to start. Also the holiday season will soon be upon us & we have two holiday gites which we let, so that takes up a lot of my time.

I will make a big effort to keep things coming, even if it's only a picture or two of things I have seen or have been doing, which makes me feel happy & I hope will be pleasing to you out there, where ever you are !

 I'll try & see if I can successfuly post a couple of photos !   then I'll sign off.

The end of Winter for the Blue-tits.





Daffodils in the wild part of the garden. 

 

The 1st Tulips 

Bye for now

Barbara Lilian