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....

Decorated pots and flowering orchids

During October and November I spent some time decorating plastic and terracotta plant pots. I painted some larger terracotta ones to put out the front of the garage where the old flower bed once stood, and I wanted more blue pots. I also painted some smaller ones to put on the terrace during the summer.

Most are stencilled but the one pot on the right is decoupaged - with the same paper serviette that I used for my Christmas tree baubles last year. The smaller pots were initially painted with chalk paint, then stencilled (or decoupaged), and finally finished off with several coats of clear varnish for protection. The larger pots were painted with an exterior paint so I just varnished over the stencilled portion of the pot.

This is the other side of the pots.

Work in progress - the two terracotta pots to go outside the garage are on the left - note the dragonfly! And of course there are some butterflies, too. 😀

The next photos were taken at New Year of my orchids which are mostly flowering again - it seems like they never stop! The white Phalaenopsis had just finished flowering when it put out another shoot from the old stem! It just goes to show - don't cut off the stems of Phalaenopsis after flowering.

In the foreground is my Jewel Orchid (Ludisia discolor) which really needs repotting and is starting to suffer and lose its leaves - I'm a bit worried about it. But I can't repot until it finishes flowering.

Two different Phalaenopsis plants - there's another with spotty leaves in our bedroom and with the white one, that makes four flowering at the moment!

This is my Dendrobium which is my favourite orchid and it has been flowering since September.

By the time they finish flowering all the wild ones outside will be popping up so living here I will rarely be without orchids in flower. 😁

Two weeks later - unfortunately we had a surprising minus 6C and minus 4C the following night and I think most of my patio plants have been killed. My Kaffir Lime looks dead although the Meyer Lemon still has a few green leaves amongst the brown ones. Everything else looks brown and trashed, even the plants well under cover on the covered patio where normally they survive winter without any problems. So all I can do is wait and see whether my lantanas come back to life (as they always lose their leaves in winter anyway) and hopefully my lemon will survive, and we will see if anything else comes back to life. My fault really for not checking the weather forecast, although I wouldn't have had enough horticultural fleece or bubble wrap for all my plants. Geraniums can be easily replaced after all. 

Back from Italy!

We've been back from Italy for several weeks but I have only just got around to downloading my photos! That is partially because we both came back with rotten colds, which may or may not have actually been Covid as they were not the same as normal colds - I did do a test but by the time we got around to getting one from the pharmacy, it was 10 days since I had caught Keith's cold and the results were negative. Anyway, it left me feeling drained although I am glad to say we are both feeling much better now.

I found some photos from July and August on my camera so I am sharing those now, before I get back to reporting on our Spanish trip.

I decided to try shooting butterflies in flight, but you know how it goes - you go outside to do so and where are the butterflies? Well exactly. I shall have to try again next year when there are more butterflies around. This summer was so hot and dry that I didn't see that many butterflies in the latter half of the summer, and it was too hot to go out for walks. A bit of a wasted summer in that respect (although the pool was nice and warm, see above. 😀)

I did get a reasonable shot of a Long Tailed Blue (Lampides boeticus) in flight - interesting because they usually sit with their wings closed. If you open up the collage you can just see its little tails. The other picture is of a more worn specimen which is lacking its tails and eye spots at the base.

October has been a very pleasant month with temps mostly in the low 20Cs and lots of sunshine. Just before we went away we had an enormous amount of rain which was sorely needed - I think it was about 50mm (2 inches) so when we came home it was very green everywhere which was so nice after the dry summer. There are still a few butterflies around, one of which is the Common Blue (Polyommatus icarus) which is below taken on wild oregano, back when it was flowering.

This is a Rough Saddle Bush Cricket (Uromenus rugosicollis) on a garden waste bag. Love its eyes! Also, I've just remembered - I don't have a photo but we found a gecko in the garden - it was on a watering can that I was carrying around at the time! I thought they were only found in the coastal areas so that was a real surprise. Haven't seen one since though there are lots of young Wall Lizards around.

And whether it is the heat or what, I don't know, but I have seen lots of Preying Mantises (Mantis religiosa) this summer. There are probably lots more, but look how well it is camouflaged against the colours of the plant! Often I spot them because they are on a wall, or have just flown out in front of me to land in a plant. If they don't move, they are very hard to notice.

My indoor orchids are doing really well. The Odontoglossom below is one of the fancy ones I bought at the plant fair last year so I was really pleased to see it come back into flower again, although these flowers didn't last very long (about two weeks) and are actually going over in this photo.

This is a Phalaenopsis that came back into bloom for the first time, so I didn't even know what colour it was going to be! These blooms are really huge ones.

My favourite purple Dendrobium flowered its face off before we went to Italy and this time, instead of the usual 5 or 6 flowers on each stem, it had loads of flowers, I think about 11 or 12 on each stem! When we came back it was just going over but has two more flowering stems which have just started flowering!

Three of my other Phalaenopsis are about to flower yet again, having already been flowering for four to five months earlier this year, and my fancy Jewel Orchid (Ludisia discolor) with the stripey leaves (you can just see it in the foreground below) has a bud on it.

I can honestly say that at the moment I have really green fingers where orchids are concerned. 💜 I am being very good about watering and feeding them regularly, and have been repotting some of them, which might help!

But how was Italy, you may be asking? It was really enjoyable and made a nice change from Spain and France. However, the amount of tourists in some places was incredible; I absolutely dread to think what it is like there during the school holidays! It was also very green everywhere which was surprising and the weather, whilst sunny, was very humid which wasn't so nice. As for the Roman sites we visited, they are out of this world. You'll have to wait until I finish blogging about our earlier Spanish travels first though! 😀

Home again and the garden in early June

We're back! We had a brilliant time in Spain which I will tell you about in due course - bearing in mind I still have a final post from the previous trip to share - but in the meantime, an update on what’s happening here.

We’ve both been busy since coming home two weeks ago - me facing a mountain of laundry and Keith, amongst other things, mowing as our housesitter didn't get around to it. I must admit I secretly rather liked our wildflower meadow! We do mow around the orchids anyway, but the pink Pyramidal Orchids (Anacamptis pyramidalis) looked lovely in amongst the grasses. There are more and more of them every year. The photos just don't do them justice. 

He’s been getting the pool ready too and it is nearly up to the temperature that I like (hot) so hopefully I will get my first dip this week. 

What I didn't get a photo of was a white crab spider of which I noticed three, each one on an orchid flower, waiting for insects to land, such as this Five-spot Burnet moth (Zygaena species) which was enjoying the nectar. I can't give an exact Latin name as it could be the Narrow-bordered Five-spot Burnet for all I know.

Out on the verge outside the garden this Long-lipped or Ploughshare Tongue Orchid (Serapias vomeracea) has turned from one flower to three with another one nearby!

The Nectar Bar looks good every year at this time, which is its peak time.

Valerian at the front, then Nepeta 'Six Hills Giant' followed by Salvia 'Hot Lips'.

From the other end, with a Sedum, then more Nepeta (Cat Mint), Verbena bonariensis and Perovskia, with the large Salvia "Hot Lips' and Valerian beyond. This bed is really buzzing with loads of bumble bees of all different sizes, bee flies, Hummingbird Hawkmoths and butterflies too. There are tiny Skippers about and at least one is a Lulworth Skipper, which pleases me no end!

Remember the front bed after it had all been cut back a few months ago? Of course weeds have germinated....

.... but not just weeds. This is the Bay tree, with a Holly front centre! Not only that, but lots of the plants are coming back to life - even the Yew has shoots coming up, there's a complete Hydrangea plant up and the Hibiscus are shooting. It's so sad as they will all be dug up in about a month's time. (This photo is about 10 days old and the Bay is about a foot taller now!).

A new insect for the garden - a Stick Insect! K found a drowned one in the pool some years back but we've never seen a live one in France before. We saw a huge one in Australia years ago but in your own garden it's rather more exciting! I'm not sure which species it is as I don't have close enough photos - yes there are several different species in southern France - who would have known? 😀

A cropped version - click on the photo to see it larger and sharper.

Before we went away the Black Redstarts built another nest in our covered terrace in the same place as before. They made it in three or four days - quite incredible! Whilst away, our housesiter told us there was activity around the nest and sure enough, when we returned mum and dad birds were back and forwards feeding babies. After a little while we could see beaks peeking over the edge and eventually, with a lot of encouraging noise going on by the parents, we could see two fluffy babes standing on the edge of the nest. We have to move out of the way when they wanted to feed the young although I found if I stood with my back to the nest then the parents would go there. 

The first young fledged (although we didn't see, obviously) and the next day the last two or three went. We could hear the parents making a lot of noise over the next couple of days, and one evening K said the father had flown into the shed and he hoped they were not checking it out to make their next nest there. Turned out, as daddy bird was making a lot of warning noises the next morning around the shed area, then coming to the pool fence and chirping at us, there was a fledgling which had spent the night in the shed! Daddy bird was telling us this (I did wonder, so asked K to open the shed). Babe promptly got fed well by both parents then later was gone, thankfully!

Finally I just wanted to show you the difference between the 'field' across the road when we came to view the house in summer 2019, and now. Back then it was pretty much just grassland.

But now the hillside is covered in predominantly Broom, with Hawthorns, Viburnum Tinus and some other shrubs all colonising the once grassland. I don't know how it was kept as just grass before unless it was grazed by animals or somehow the grass was cut. Now the grass that is there is so long because there is a thick thatch underneath meaning you sink in a long way - it's really hard to walk in there and there are lots of low growing brambles as well. Shame as I had envisaged myself in that meadow stalking butterflies - though thankfully I don't see many butterflies there which is good (for me!).

As I type this removals guys are packing up the basement as 'The Works' start next Monday! The drilling should take about four days, then the following week we have the tilers here for two weeks retiling the garage, workroom and spare bedroom. Finally the following week come the guys to do the concrete 'pavement' around three sides of the house so that the rain drains away from the foundations. The painting and decorating will take place in two year's time if nothing has moved/cracked during that time. Wish us luck! 😁

Hope you are all well and I will get to your blogs to see how you have been getting on soon! 


P.S. The birds are back checking out the nest again - less than a week after the little ones fledged!!!

My Cymbidium is finally flowering!

I've only been waiting since the beginning of December for the flowers to open! Originally there were six buds but three withered and died, one by one, leaving just three flowers. The stem is so long, it's towering over all my other orchids. 

I have three Phalaenopsis in flower now too, which includes a new one that K gave me for Valentine's Day. It's so nice to have plants flowering indoors in winter when there is very little happening in the garden.

Remember my Mother In Law's Tongue that flowered twice last year? I noticed another flower stem on it! That's three times in less than one year. I'll try again to photograph the flowers this time when they open up.

I also cut off the keiki (baby) from my Dendrobium and potted it up. However i basically had to pot it upside down as the roots were sticking upwards when it was attached to the main plant. I had to cut some shoots off in order to get it into the pot and at least four leaves went brown and fell off and I thought it was going to die. But the remaining leaves are fine now and there is a new shoot coming up, so I think it will be OK. 

I'm obviously doing something right with my houseplants, bar the Spider Plants. They really don't like it here and just dry out too quickly, and even if I try to water them more often, they are still unhappy and have lots of brown leaves. I always thought Spider Plants were foolproof? It must be the heating which is via warm air coming out of ceiling vents.

My oldest Phalaenopsis which has flowered many times since I got it.

There are also dozens of Early Spider Orchids flowering in the lawn again! I'll take photos later when the grass has dried out. We've had another week of awful high wind and rain. I'm way behind with the garden tidying up after winter. Annoyingly it looks like I have lost all my Bidens in pots, I think because we had a number of very cold days where the temps hovered around freezing all day, which is unusual for here. Never mind, I'll just get some new plants to fill in the gaps in my large pots. They served me well for several years. 😀

Pyrenees Trip June 2024 - Part 15 Gorges du Segre, France

We saw a spot suitable for eating our packed lunch down by the stream so I managed to scramble down the bank to sit on the rocks (note my blow up cushion, which I take everywhere! I still can't sit on hard things).

This is a Lackey Moth (Malacosoma neustria) caterpillar.

This picture shows where glaciers were 25,000 years ago, and you can see where we walked - from the Bains (thermal baths) of Llo, up the river valley, then around and over the hill where St Feliu is marked, then a steep slope down to the top of the village. You'll need to click on the photo to see the details.

This Pink was very bright and pretty though I have no idea what it is as there are umpteen species of wild Dianthus in Europe.

Fragrant Orchid (Gymnadenia conopsea).

The view. There was the worst haze I have ever seen - there should be mountains across the valley there! Yet we were in lovely warm sunshine so apart from the lack of views, it didn't matter.

Possibly a Heath Spotted Orchid (Dactylorhiza maculata). It has spotty leaves.

Keith is very good at taking photos of me with my eyes closed! 😀

Broad-leaved Marsh Orchid (Dactylorhiza majalis)

My favourite flower of the day was this Black-eyed Heron's Bill (Erodium glandulosum). Erodiums are related to the Cranesbill Geraniums, but much smaller plants.

Houseleeks, one of the host plants of the Apollo butterfly, along with sedums. The one on the right and bottom is the Cobweb Houseleek (Sempervivum arachnoideum). The other one that is flowering I am not sure but could be the Common Houseleek (Sempervivum tectorum).

We decided not to hike up this steep hill to the remains of the chapel called St Feliu, which you can just see at the top. We wouldn't have had a better view up there due to the haze.

Another Fritillary that I can't ID. Without pictures of the underwings, Fritillaries are very difficult to ID. This might actually be the same species as the unknown one in the previous post.

Another photo by Keith - this time it's a Robber Fly with prey of Provence Orange Tip butterfly.

The only part of the walk that I didn't like was the very steep descent back to Llo, and I thank goodness that I had my alpine stick to help. I find steep slippery slopes terrifying - the last thing I want to do is land on my bum! 😱

We came out at the top of the village. I just love this kind of old rounded slate tile that is still seen here and there in old villages in the mountains.

Down at the bottom of the village with the old ruin of La Tour del Vacaro in view on a hillside.

Back to where we parked near the Thermal Baths. Our route started off to the right out of this picture.

Well what a day! Other species of butterfly seen but not photographed:

Speckled Wood
Provence Orange Tip
Orange Tip
Black Veined White
Large White
Comma
Spanish Gatekeeper
Brimstone
Cleopatra
Clouded Yellow
Painted Lady
Red Admiral
White Admiral (or Southern White Admiral)
Small Heath
Wood White 

Total approx 26 species for the day. 💜 The good thing is that this place is only 2.5 hours from home, so I certainly want to come back again, though I would like to walk further along the paved road towards the refuge next time.

The next day we went home, via Villefranche de Conflent, another Vauban citadel not far from Mont Louis. I don't have any great photos from there so I am winding up this travelogue with a final photo of me with a very strangely presented chicken kebab!!!

I hope you have enjoyed coming along on our travels with us. Many thanks to those of you who comment and let me know, or like on facebook.