Sunday morning means hard work at The Shack, but only for a limited time with powered tools, the rest of it is sweat of our brows. Yesterday I made a start on planting the potatoes that should keep us fed next autumn and winter, and today I carried on. I thought working in the morning might be a bit easier than in the afternoon, like I did yesterday, as it wouldn't be quite so warm. How wrong can you be? As that bit of the garden is relatively exposed to the east/south east, I was in full sun as I picked over the soil for wood, rocks and bundles of roots. I then retrieved a piece of weed suppressant mat with ready cut potato holes from another part of the garden, laid and stapled it, and planted another 16 seed potatoes in the holes. Now it is nature's turn to work her magic. There is still another chunk of plot to pick over and cover, and another 28 seed potatoes to be planted, but not for a few days, as I have clients who need me and the Azay One to visit on Friday.
While I was cleaning and picking over the potato bed, John was out with the strimmer style brushcutter, trying to clear paths round the ponds at the bottom of the orchard and the wildflower meadow. While deer, badgers, cats and pheasants can get round there, up until today, we couldn't. It is still a work in progress, and we look forward to the day when we break through to have a circular walk around pond 2 and actually find pond 3, but it was rather wonderful to walk around the other side of pond 2, as if I too were a wild deer.
I got back to the garden to find the most awful violation of 'elf and safety violation going on, but in a good cause. How many unsafe working practices can be seen here?
Having said that, it was totally worth it. One day we will have one of those picnic benches here, so we can sit with sandwiches and cats and admire this wonderful view of rolling Anjou countryside. Today we stood and admired and watched the tanker from the dairy drive through the view to pick up milk from the farm, and thought that life is good.
Finally, to note that we are getting into wild orchid season, with the first, an overblown early purple style, coming out in the middle of the wildflower meadow. It will be two or three weeks before the bee orchids send up their flower spikes here I think and then another couple of weeks before the lizard orchids do the same. Nice to see the first one though.
A demain!
Comments