Ah France, how do I love thee.......let me count the ways (part 1)!

I love France. I've been going there since I was 13 - yes, THAT long! I've travelled the length and breadth of the county, fallen in love there, learnt the language by living with a family there, seen it change from a run-down, slightly tatty country to the vibrant place it is now, fallen out of love there, had my first experience of drinking wine there (but the less said about that little episode, the better!) and somewhere along the line left a bit of my romantic heart in the land there. sigh!

Here are a few of the reasons why I love it:

Lovely sweet cottages - this was the front of our gite.

with a nice pool to play in!

French markets and 'brocante' - second hand/vintage stalls!

Yep, I bought the jam kettle - 25 Euros ....I knocked him down from 30! Bargain...... possibly!!

I love the way they lay out the stuff for sale.

Gorgeous vintage china ........ but I fought the urge to buy and settled for taking photos instead!

....and of course a girl has to eat! 50 cents for a chocolate crepe. Last-Born thought she'd died and gone to heaven!

French architecture and shutters - the shutters fit with the romantic in me!

Mmmmh - dried hams and sausissons.

........pretty little side streets


......and lovely picnic spots!

What more could a girl ask for?

Wait and see!!!

The fruits of their labours.......!

Given our surfit of fruit, the Gnomelets were dispatched to pick a load yesterday. To hear the initial grumblings and chunterings you'd have thought I was sending them to forage deep in a dangerous forest where they'd be surrounded by wild and ferocious beasties, rather than going a hundred yards up the garden to the fruit cage!

However, bless 'em, they soon recovered their normal good humour and chattering and singing could be heard from within the depths of the fruit cage - along with the occasional moan about 'currant-pickers back' and 'slave labour'!

This is their haul after about an hours' work!

Then they sat and carefully prepared all the fruit, stripping the currants from all their zillions of little stalks - what a pair of stars they were! (First-Born is on the left, Last-Born is on the right)


Total outcome from a day's cooking = 7 jars of redcurrant jam, 4 jars of raspberry jam, 2 jars of blackcurrant jam, 1 large kilner jar of redcurrant vodka, 2 medium/large kilner jars of redcurrant gin, a tray of 'topped and tailed' gooseberries in the freezer, a pint of redcurrant juice let down 50/50 with water and one of my all time favourites sweets - a summer pudding! Not a bad days' work!

Though I am curious to know why the redcurrants float in gin, but sink in vodka?!



I've never blogged about my cooking before, but Shady Gardener of 'Does Everything Grow Better in my Neighbour's Garden?' at yardisgreen asked me if I shared recipes - and it appears that, as of now, I do!


The photo below is the recipe for the redcurrant tart. It's from the July 2008 Sainsbury's magazine, but you can see why I kept it!


If you click on the photo it'll enlarge and be easily readable - enjoy!


Anyway, we're off on our holidays at the weekend - to a cottage in the Dordogne in France! Along with all the sleeping, eating, sleeping, canoeing, cycling, sleeping, eating, swimming, walking, sleeping etc. that we plan to do (do you get the feeling that I'm just a tad tired today?!), we're also hoping to pop in to see Rob of ourfrenchgarden whilst we're down there and to see his lovely garden - I can't wait!

Normal service on the progress of the Japanese Garden and the erecting of the Tea House will be resumed in a fortnight or so when I get back - exciting times ahead!!!

Summer Goodies!

At last ...... my fruit and vegetables are finally ripening!

We've had to bung lots of the raspberries straight into the freezer as I've not had enough time to make any jam this week, but the prospect of my family coming for a meal tomorrow night (I have to just put 'a meal' as I'm from Yorkshire and call it 'tea' but Himself calls it 'dinner' - because he's posh and from Leicestershire!) ......... anyway, they're all coming and the redcurrants are ripe so I made a Redcurrant Tart!



There was some of the scrummy gooey mixture left over, so I popped up the garden and picked a few raspberries and made a pastryless tart - but it looked so nice that we ate the lot before I had chance to take a photo!

Enjoy your summer bounty!

Beautiful things and beautiful people!

I know that I am very lucky to live in a wonderful place and be surrounded by both beautiful people and beautiful things! My family and friends are very dear to me and hold a special place in my heart, but I also consider many bloggers to be amongst my friends too.

One such blogger friend is Carolynn at A Glowing Ember. Back in early May I got an email from her saying that she was sending me a belated birthday present (I think I'd been having a moan about feeling old - must have been a Monday morning after overdoing the gardening!!!) The present was coming by sea, so I knew it'd be a couple of months, but the excitement mounted in the Gnome household as the weeks progressed .......with first-Born and Last-Born being as bad as me but with Himself maintaining his usual cool, calm manner about our giddyness!

At last the day came when I arrived home from work to be greeted by two teenage tornados bellowing "it's here mum, it's arrived, open it, open it!!". Carefully tearing open the parcel I found a lovely card and the most gorgeous little faerie door I've ever seen! Carolynn reckons that every garden should have its own resident faerie - and who am I to argue with that?!

The problem now is where to put it to attract the faeries to this wonderous portal?
I've had a wander round the garden and looked at many likely places, but would value your opinions on the best site!

1. The pine tree?


2. In the wood pile with the giant? (I'm really not sure if faeries and giants get on that well....!)


3. On the Norwegian Spruce amongst the ivy?


(This is our faerie ring up in the copse - it'll make the next photo more understandable!)


4. Under the faerie ring table?

Or
5. On the blast wall? (this is left over from the 2nd World War, when our 'potting shed' was an air raid shelter for two families. The blast wall protected the door. Nowadays there's a flower bed on the far side of it and teenagers climb onto the blast wall to jump onto the trampoline!!! - I know, I know.... Health and Safety would have a field day, but I just don't look any more!)

What do you think? Where should it be placed to best attract the faeries?

So..... Carolynn officially classes as one of the beautiful people because she so kindly and generously sent me this lovely, lovely gift totally out of the blue (- and I just adore suprise presents!) just because she saw it and thought I'd like it. That woman is a star. I LOVE it! Thanks you SO much Carolynn, me and the faeries will treasure it!

One of my other beautiful people is Last-Born Gnomelet!

She has just turned 16, has finished all her GCSE exams and, last Friday night, had her school Prom. Proms didn't exist in the UK when I left school - we got a 'leavers disco', which was exactly the same as all the other school discos I ever went to! I would have LOVED to have gone to a Prom when I was 16!

Anyway, I got to go vicariously through Last-Born and we did the whole, dress, taira, shoes, bag shopping bit and I helped her get ready for her big night!

Here she is in all her 16 year old beauty and glory!

Last-Born, her 3 best friends and the lads they shared the Limo with!

Last-Born and her Prom Date - Jamie. Don't they look sweet?! (she'll kill me for saying that, but .....hey, they do!)

Last-Born enjoying "the best night of my life!"

She fair brought a tear to my eye and a lump to my throat!

The wood has arrived ......!

The arrival of some wood may seem to be a fairly trivial thing to be getting so excited about .......but it has taken nearly 3 years of hard work to get to this point where suddenly the vision of the tea house is turning into the reality of the tea house (possibly)!

But first the wood has to be housed somewhere nice and dry - so it doesn't warp, and protected from the sun - so it doesn't warp! Can't have a warped wood tea house now can we?!

So we built a wood store from our wide and varied collection of random bits of wood, old pallets and the old back door that got ousted when we put the new back door in a different place! It may look wonky, but not even a Force Ten gale would shift it - I'm sure Himself was a Victorian engineer in a former existence!

The photo below is the wood store frame. The garage door is (fortuitously) a stable door - from when the previous owners kept a pony and grazed it up the garden!

The woodstore with its waterproof tarpaulin cover. The long pieces of wood protrude into the garage, but Himself screwed a plywood sheet over the gap to stop anyone getting in.

Looking from the garage into the woodstore past Himself's new toy (oops, sorry love!) erm, new

cross-arm saw.

Cross-arm saw and pillar drill set up ready for use!

Himself happy in his work!

He 'tested' the tools by making a new sawing horse - bless!

The first tea house joint - a simple dovetail apparently!

So, I have hope - I really do think that the tea house may finally be built this summer .......if it ever stops raining for long enough for us to put it up!

Wisteria Lane ....and then some!

It's been a wet, windy and chilly few days plus my computer isn't working properly as the internet connection to the house is via a microwave link and has gone intermittently squiffy so, as I've not been able to blog, email OR garden reliably, I decided to cheer myself up with a few photos of the wisteria at the front of the house as it has slowly blossomed (in spite of the weather!) whilst the computer is actually working - hope it doesn't pack up half way through!

Enjoy!

The first hints of blooms begin to show.

The Wisteria has gradually sent out shoots to climb the drainpipe near the front door. It's a bit more sheltered there so they have bloomed slightly earlier than the main bush.


The pre-blooms look feathery-soft.

A single self-set poppy peeps through the fronds.


Up close and personal.

The Wisteria in full bloom.
The scent has been wonderful this year - if I could bottle it, I'd wear it all year round. I know many people love the fragrances of Lilac and Lavender - so do I, but Wisteria in full bloom beats them hands down!
I've had all the windows open on dry days and the perfume has drifted gently in filling the house with its glorious perfume. It is so evocative of warm Spring days ......if only we'd had more of them this year! (if only we had smell-o-blog so that you could share the scent!)


The blooms are beautiful even in the rain.


I love the raindrops on the petals.


Even I can eventually have enough photos of Wisteria, so here are a few different plants and flowers to delight the eye.

An Azalea just opening up - on yet another rainy day!

The same bush a few days later ....and sunny!

The Labernum trees have been fantastic this year too. I think they must have liked the long cold spell.

In the back garden, just above and to the East of the house.

Senetti glowing and brightening up a dark, shady bed.

Plants and ornaments waiting to be planted into the Japanese Garden. Their time will come!

If at first you don't succeed, try again...and again...and again..and...!

When it came to building the stream, I have to confess to my usual level of naivety (some may say ignorance!) about how much work was involved, how long it would take, how we'd do the technical bits - you know, the usual sort of thing!

I hadn't sat down and worked out what I wanted either. I just had this plan/vision/idea (call it what you will) that the water would meander gently down a stream which was bordered by rocks and stones which were meant to represent valley or canyon walls.......I had NO concept of what the stream bed was made of or how we would deal with the changes in water levels given that I now wanted a shallow pool at the top in front of the waterfall, or anything vaguely helpful that would enable Himself to understand and interpret my vision! It wasn't a problem for me - I could SEE the perfect end result in my head. Getting there - phah!



Anyway, once Himself had got over yet another episode of sheer despair at my ineptitude and complete lack of interest in the nitty gritty (boring!) details, he began to try to draw the details out of me so that he had something to work on. The conversation was along the lines of:

Himself: What's the stream bed going to be made of?
Me: Err, dunno really, something flat?
Himself: (sigh) Where are we going to get something flat from?
Me: Err, dunno - have you got any ideas?
Himself: (sigh) How do you want to do the levels changes?
Me: (with lots of arm waving and gesticulations) Well I sort of thought of a couple of little waterfalls about 3 or 4 inches high each - you know, water gently trickling over the rocks, that sort of thing! Lots of pebbles and pea gravel on the stream bed to look pretty and interesting and natural, like it's always been there.....!
Himself: (sigh) Hmmm! How are you planning to do the sides of the stream?
Me: Err, hmmm, erm, well, sort of...you know..., stones and bolders....erm.... dunno really yet - but I know it'll be right when I've done it because I can see it in my head!!!!
Himself: SIGH!!!!
Does this man deserve a medal or what?!

Himself had the brilliant idea that we could aquire some flat slabs from around the garden .....I found some slabs making up a hideous crazy paving path down the east side of the house where we rarely go (probably because the path is so awful.....!). The slabs are sandstone and split easily, giving us large, but thin and relatively light pieces to work with. These were laid on a bed of sand and the 'correct' slabs identified for each bit of the stream. This involved trying lots of slabs in each position to work out which one was the nearest to perfect fit we could get for butting up to the waterfall stone coming out of the pond (that took several attempts to find, I can tell you!) which ones would become the stream waterfalls, which one looked right in which position, which ones would make the curves in the stream, etc,etc (yeah, I know - straight slabs, curved stream!!) - and then they were lifted up, had the sand readjusted, put back, lifted up, readjusted etc, several times - for each slab! Well they had to be level or the water would flow unevenly and disappear down one side and neither of us wanted that!

The top photo shows Himself (still slightly in despair mode) having identified the first slab for
the shallow pool and enjoying making the bridge and ensuring that it was perfectly level on the slab on the sand on the butyl on the fleece!!

The photo below shows the 1st attempt to line the bed and the sides of the stream and create the edge of the area for planting (can't call it a border or a rockery, so I'm stuck with calling it a bed - but that's not right either!)

The two photos below are the 1st attempt at creating my river valley - but the whole thing looked too 'forced' and un-natural. I wasn't happy with it at all - despite the fact that I had heaved hundreds of stones in and out of different position zillions of times, tried assorted permutations, balanced, twisted and turned rocks to get the 'right' shape and woke up on the Monday morning aching all over, even with bits of me I didn't know I'd got!

The water flowed smoothly over the slabs, but the sides were just SO wrong!

I was eventually happy, however, with the sides of the stream up at the top between the pond waterfall and the top bridge!

Both Himself and I spent ages trying to work out what was wrong with the river. I realised that the stones were all too sharp and regular, there were no water softened boulders. Himself, ever the sailor, realised that the river shouldn't all be regular - it needed a beach........!

So we made a beach at the point where a beach would be created naturally - that man is so clever!

The photo above shows the stream with an assortment of stones and baby boulders down one side and the beach on the island at the other. The green on the island is moss - from our moss mine, otherwise known as a lawn, down the garden! The soil area on the right is where a lot of topsoil from the ponds and streams was dumped. Here I had begun to dig it out and shift it (again!) to other parts of the garden. Why couldn't I have done that in the first place instead of ending up moving it about 3 times?!


The stream flowing. Oh yes!!!

Looking upstream past the island. the variety of boulders, rocks, stones, pebbles and pea gravel is more obvious in this picture - as is the reason why the first attempt didn't work! Ho hum!

The bottom pond will be FAR easier to build because we've learnt so much from building the top pond!