Springtime at home

Time for a break from my travels and write a bit about what's going on at home! We had a lovely few days of sunshine and even two days with temps around 25C, which was a real treat. Two days later on Sunday and it was wet, windy and 9C. I guess that's April for you.

Keith has planted out my Olive tree (at long last) and made a nice wooden surround for it, and I also found a pretty lime green Smoke Bush at the garden centre so he's planted that out too with the same kind of surround. In the distance he is attacking my new (teeny tiny) veg bed! We needed to add a bit of interest to this area since the fruit trees had to go, yet the Olive can be pruned to keep it from getting too large as we don't want the insurance company complaining about another tree too close to the house!

Not sure why the photo is at this angle. I was trying out my new phone camera (actually no different really from the previous one, both Motorolas). Think the phone or my finger slipped or something. Anyway you can see some of my herb bed, which has become rather overgrown and woody, well some of the plants anyway. Where the hedge is we used to see all the neighbour’s pool over it, which shows how much the Oleanders have grown in six years! There’s even a ‘rogue’ tree which appeared above the hedge a few years ago. I haven’t tried to ID it yet, something I keep forgetting about. I guess a seed was dropped in some sparrow poop!

This is my new veg bed. It's just 1 x 3 meters and should be fine as all I really want is enough space for one courgette, three cherry tomatoes and some salad, spring onions and herbs. If I find I need more space then he'll do me another bed the same size parallel. He's gone to a lot of trouble making these nice surrounds and treating the wood and varnishing it.

The big problem unfortunately is very heavy clay soil, which has sat under gravel and geotextile for goodness knows how many years and was probably all compacted by diggers when the house was being built about 37 years ago. What you see here is horrible clumps after K has tried to 'dig' over the patch! Since then it has been left to dry out and he has managed to reduce the size of the clumps and I have even put on my wellies and walked up and down, stomping away trying to break up the hard lumps. 

On top we have added what's left of our homemade compost, lots of spent compost from all the pots of dead plants that were killed this winter by the sudden freeze, and some gravel then on top has gone three sacks of bought potting compost. Another three sacks and it should be about right. I do need to be able to make a drill to sow seed! In a few years of this stuff mixing together then hopefully the structure wll be much improved, after all my herb bed was like this to start with and is miles better now.

Honestly, I go from the sublime to the ridiculous. My last potager was dry sandy free draining soil which needed lots of watering, and this is the total opposite!

My new Smoke Bush (Cotinus coggygria) called ‘Golden Lady’. I just love them in this colour and they turn lovely orange in the autumn too.

I went for a walk along the road which runs along the ridge here looking out over the valley. At the moment it is Lady Orchid (Orchis purpurea) season and there are loads of them in this area - just sadly none in my garden!

I thought that this first one might be a hybrid but I have been assured by several people who know their stuff that it is just another Lady Orchid, and that they can vary a lot, much like so many other orchids. It makes identifying them really hard!

Now this one I knew was a Lady Orchid, as they mostly look like this.

I've been told it's possible this one is a hybrid, i.e. a cross between two orchids, in this case Lady Orchid and unknown. I have found Lady x Military Orchids in this part of my local patch before so who knows? I certainly dont!

This is looking towards the Pyrenees on the right and the Corbieres on the left. Where that bare patch is on the hillside is because people/builders/farmers have been dumping spoil over the side of the hill, which peeves me no end. And because of this, with all the rain we had in January and February, it just ran off that bare patch and pooled in the field below, killing off the crop and leaving that bare white chalky patch. I'm quite surprised that some of the hillside didn't collapse into the field below.

Looking back in the other direction, towards the Montagne Noir. We used to walk down this track during Covid as we were restricted to 1km from home, and called that lone tree the 'Lollipop Tree'. The track comes to an end at a field at the bottom but you can walk along the edge of the field, then there is another only used by animals track to follow, which joins another proper walking route. At least it gave us a bit of choice when it came to where we could walk during those times and gave us a loop walk to do. Thank goodness that time is over!

One of the Star of Bethlehem family, Ornithogalum divergens, flowering in the grass verge.

The initial white blossom period is over (for now, until the Robinia starts flowering) and Lilac is flowering everywhere, both in gardens and also in the wild. The scent whilst I was standing here was really lovely, due I expect to the heat. The bare fields will mostly be sunflowers later on. 💛

Another tree in bloom right now is the Judas Tree (Cercis siliquastrum) which is mostly growing in gardens but also here and there in the wild - also along the banks of the motorway on our way to the coast, which is a nice sight. This one was just growing in a hedgerow.

Looking back towards home with my house on the left and the top of the old part of the village in the distance.

I have my usual orchid lawn at this time of the year - the Early Spider and Sombre Bee Orchids are going over, whereas the Yellow Bee Orchids (Ophrys lutea) below are just popping up. There will be more Early Spiders later as I have a whole patch of them that come up later in the back garden.

Finally, my new Wisteria floribunda, which I bought to replace the previous climber that never came to anything. I was going to replace it two years ago but when we went to bury Hallie here we discovered that the Bignone (Campsis radicans) that we thought was dead had started sprouting. So I potted it up but it still never came to anything, and died again - properly this time - yet it's a vigorous climber for everyone else! So let's hope in a few years I will have a lovely display of Wisteria over this arch as it's been bare for too long!

I hope you enjoyed this little glimpse into springtime in our neck of the woods. At least there are a few butterflies around now on the warm days and plenty of bees, and even bees already going into my bee hotel! I haven't seen a Swallow yet though....