Not me, at least
not when I’ve got a battered French garden to get back into shape. Once last
weekend’s rain was over and I’d paid my first visit to my Monday afternoon
craft group, this week has passed in a flash. I’ve spent much of each day in
the fresh air, wrestling the mower over the mess the cattle have made of our
ground. Already I feel fitter and ache less in the mornings, so perhaps I shouldn’t
be cross with the beasts for doing what comes naturally.
I’m not
referring to the inevitable cowpats, since any gardener knows that a bit of
well-rotted manure is not to be sniffed at. It’s the inches-deep holes punched
by their hooves which have made life so difficult this week. Some of them are
big enough to trap the mower’s front wheels, making progress very stop-and-start
and sometimes achingly slow and tiring.
It’s only now
that most of the grass has had its first, high cut that I can assess the extent
of the damage and I use that word advisedly. Mowing our uneven ground has never
been easy, but the current unevenness is off the scale in comparison with
previous years. In fact a few areas of the garden – under the trees and in the
lee of the house – resemble nothing so much as small-scale buffalo wallows, created
when the poor animals huddled in what shelter they could find during the
terrible weather we (and they) endured last winter.
In order to stop
the unwary visitor (or indeed DH and me) ricking an ankle, I’m busy filling all
the holes with grass cuttings, topped off with the fine soil the moles have so
kindly provided for me. Elegant it isn’t, but the cuttings will rot down and
the grass will eventually grow back through, as I’ve proved in various parts of
the garden in previous years. In the meantime, much of what passes for our lawn
looks like it’s suffering from a virulent attack of measles or smallpox and
certainly won’t win any prizes for best-kept garden in the foreseeable future.
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| Humps, bumps and aching muscles |
On a more cheerful note, I’ve given my little
flower border a jolly good forking-over and weeding and have planted out the new
plants I brought with me. To do this I had to dig holes in parts of the border
which have never been thoroughly dug, which has resulted in another fine crop
of stones being brought to the surface. It appears to be impossible to stick a
fork in the ground here without hitting a stone, so my arm muscles (and my patience) have been having even more exercise.
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| New rockery anyone? |
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| Progress IS being made |
Now it’s time for
a well-earned break. Tomorrow we will be out all day, enjoying what will
certainly be an extended lunch with old friends, followed by a concert in the
evening featuring an a capella women’s
choir in the fine church in Saint Hilaire-du-Harcouët. I shan’t know myself in
something other than my gardening clothes.
At the weekend
our neighbouring commune up the hill will be celebrating its fête communale and commemorating the 70th
anniversary of the liberation of this area. Despite a less than promising
weather forecast for Saturday at least, DH and I will enjoy joining in with some
of the events, though we draw the line at a dance that doesn’t even start until
11.30pm! We know our limits…
