Summer - blue skies and sunflowers

The beginning of July and everything is looking lovely under the gorgeous blue summer sky. The sunflower field opposite the house is just starting to show pools of yellow in amongst the green leaves and in a few days will be a vast expanse of colour as far as the eye can see. 

Sunflowers just starting to appear

The hollyhocks spring up where they choose, normally in the gravel paths and up against the walls.  This year the range of colours is fab - everything from pale yellow to a really dark mauve - and the bees are having a great time!

Outside the back door

Shades of pink.

A very deep pink, with a very dusty bee inside!

We planted 3 Alexander roses in January in the back garden of the Farmhouse and the scarlet flowers are fantastic in the sun, they seem to give the other more muted colours a lift.  They're in part of the veg patch because last year we had so many rabbits all of our greens got eaten before we had a look in.  The same thing is happening this year and most mornings we see two baby rabbits and two larger ones hopping around in bunny paradise - so next year we are going to fence off a smaller area for greens and hope that does the trick.  The toms ( you can see the canes in the pic below ) are doing well though and we should be picking them in the next few days.

Alexander roses in the Farmhouse garden

A couple of weeks ago we were down to our last pot of jam and were in danger of having to buy some.  Luckily the raspberries, redcurrants, black currants and cherries ripened just in time and stocks have been replenished.  The mirabelle plums are just about ripe too and we've already been collecting windfalls - so more jam making is imminent.  The plums are quite small, juicy and very sweet - lovely!  By the end of the summer our store cupboard will be full of jams which we serve to guests at breakfast and sometimes they take a couple of jars home.  It always gets used up by the following summer even though I seem to make more each year!

Mirabelle plums outside the studio

In between lawn mowing, pool cleaning and other essential summer jobs Mark is busy in the studio preparing for an exhibition at the little Chapelle in the village of St Pierre de Maille.  It is taking place from 11th August for 7 days and he will be opening from 2-6 every day.  More to follow on this!




  

Hare today gone tomorrow

It was thundering and lightning and very very frightning, and I can't remember why we were outside, but anyway suddenly there was that feeling of being watched, a real beady eye moment.  Quick, quick, get the camera.  Run, run, got the camera.  Creep, creep very quietly whilst getting the camera going.  Oh no!  Flat batteries.  Run, run, change the batteries.  Creep, creep back again.  Is hare still there?  Yes. Phew. It's gone now, probably watching us from a luscious flower bed!.    

International plant rescue

Agapanthus knightyitus - discarded on a Guernsey compost heap before being rescued and brought to the international plant refuge at Chenevaux and now showing its appreciation for all of the attention and nurturing it has had since it arrived.

Birdies on the wing

The goldfinch fledglings have left their nest - we caught them just as they flew off.  You can see them perched on branches just to the side of the nest, looking a bit bemused.  Just as the photo was taken they flew off, at some alarming angles, skimming the ground and up and down, then they seemed to get the hang of it without any accidents.  Apparently the nest in the cafe is a pied wagtail, and way up on a metal beam in the open barn there is a pigeon nest - if you can call it that as its just a very loose pile of sticks.  They were in the same spot last year and the eggs fell out, splat.  Bean plants that were doing really well are disappearing - we planted 24 good sized plants and now there are 19!  Definately those pesky rabbits so I am going to put up a keep out sign. 

Goldfinches

This nest is tucked down between the branches of a conifer that is just in front of the open barn that we use for parking and storing wood.  The first photo was taken about 3 weeks ago and you can hardly see the chicks - there are actually 5.  The second photo was taken today and you can clearly see the colours on the feathers.  Either the chicks are getting too big for the nest or the parents have had enough as the nest( beautifullymade ) has been tipped over as if to encourage the chicks to start fledging.   In the winter we put out sunflower seed and mixed seed and get lots of goldfinches on the bird table as well as on the plants that have gone to seed.  The hoopoes have gone, hope they come back next year.  There's something going on in the cafe too, a very messy nest - will find out and let you know soon.

Free sweets

We've just had an afternoon snack from the sweet shop in the front garden - lovely Mirabelle plums.  They are gorgeous, quite small but very sweet.  I just stand under a branch and eat them until I get to the point when I think I had better stop!  Mark was mowing earlier and kept being bombarded as the breeze blew the fruit off the trees - and they were falling down his back and getting stuck on the mower seat and then they were getting all squashed under his bum!  We didn't eat those ones.  These trees self seed prolifically and we have transplanted several to fill in gaps.  Of course they are all fruiting at the same time, so for the next few days we will be scoffing them like lunatics and (with equal lunacy) collecting them in buckets to make jam.  I say with lunacy as there are still at least a couple of dozen jars left in the pantry from last year when I got really carried away and made about 70 pots!  Bit daft really but I will still do it as one year we had a late frost and didn't have any fruit at all, and you never know if there might be a sugar shortage at some point and jam making will have to stop!  Oh no, what will we put on our toast?

Cool and zingy

This is the first of what looks like a bumper crop of cucumbers.  Luckily these ones aren't sour and spiky like some outdoor varieties so we are actually going to be able to eat them!  I wasn't sure as the seeds were just ones that were reduced at the end of last summer and came along with all sorts of other things with the packets stapled together in the corner - zinnias, sweet peas, pumpkin, passion flower, you name it!  The passion flowers didn't germinate which is a shame - but there's not much about them that inspires passion anyway.  Zinnias are far more passionate with their zingy coloured flowers ranging from puce through to burnt orange.   I like that - zingy zinnias!  We have finally had some good rain, lots of it, just falling out of the sky in great big bucket loads.  So Mark has been emptying the water butts into a big tank that is next to the well.  We picked raspberries yesterday and there are loads so more jam to make and it will be yummy.  

Chenevaux courgettes

Every year Mark tells me not to plant so many courgettes.  They're not his favourite veg to say the least.  So only 3 for 2011, compared to 5 last year.  Its not so much the taste of them, more their behaviour, which may be particular to the ones we grow here at Chenevaux - have you had expereinces of badly behaved courgettes as well?  They really are sneaky, we go out in the morning and pick the ones that look ready and as soon as our backs are turned they send out some more.  Sometimes they grow so much in a day that they turn from lovely little things to great monsters.  One year we had so many that we put a whole load in the back of a van that belongs to a local cafe owner (she had already told us that she had too many of her own but we didn't want to take them home again) and asked the post lady to give them away free on her rounds,   Anyway as you can see, courgette time is here again!

Here come the hoopoes

Some new birds have made themselves at home in the garden behind the Farmhouse - they seem to be fond of our apple trees.  Not sure if they are rare or common here but it is the first itme we have seen them.  We also have a couple of mad jackdaws that keep flying into a little recessed window and make a real racket, usually very early in the morning.  Goldfinches have nested in the conifers in front of the open barn and Mark says there are 6 eggs in one of the nests.  Robins are building nests and seem to want to do it indoors as we keep finding piles of grass and moss on the floor.  And the fledglings of blue tits and great tits are quite big now but still a bit inclined to crash land.

Rabbit alert

I can't believe it, rabbits everywhere and they have dug a burrow right in the middle of the potatoes.  I even filled it in yesterday but they have excavated all of the soil out again.  Some of them are really small and they seem to be eating the thick leaved weeds, maybe they can't find enough food - there's certainly not a lot going on in our potager as a result of the really dry weahter we have had recently.