officially called nasturtium mound …….

My goodness me it is already the end of June and if it were not for the fact that the days end at midnight and the sun is beating down on us I just would not believe it….where has the time gone.  This is a photo of our visiting re-enactors who were with us throughout DDay week. They sent us this picture and a picture of their house way down in the South of France. Alaine  made us promise that we  would not sell up without letting him know as he wants to  live up here close to where his passion of dressing up as a Gi and driving about in his American command car is common place,  where nobody bats an eyelid at the spectacle.  I guess the picture was sent as first contact in case we might consider a house exchange in a few years’ time. We have Googled their area and it is hot hot hot and very dry but they have a pool and who knows how we will be feeling in a few years’ time.

I handed my job back and was thanked for all my efforts by the new owners with a lovely plant. Mike and I have been busy making flower beds this year as our garden is very much park design with no beds to tend just wild and energetic scrubs to slash down once a year and nettles and brambles to keep at bay so a new plant to place is a treat. I woke up unemployed with no anxiety as to whether the DDay tours I organised for that day would happen, not waiting for the phone to start shrieking to alert me that the customer was lost or a guide was lost or worst still the French trains were lost. And now, Mike and I talk to one another over breakfast and make a day plan and we have not done that in over 18 months, joy oh joy

 

 

A few years back I stole seed pods off a bush  in Carentan Marina because I liked the look of it . We had no idea what the plant   was called so we  just named it  Marina prickly plant until our friends Pauline and Ron came to visit and called it …. Broom. I grew these  seeds into massive shrubs and we moved them three times before we were happy with their position,  One autumn we were driving past the Marina and noticed that the broom had been pruned  to an inch on its life, just a collection of stumps in the ground and I moaned and groaned for days about the heavy handed way the French gardeners treat their shrubs…….but  this week I had to eat my words as I now know why every few years Broom needs putting back in it’s place because left unpruned  it  bolts in growth  and then collapses under the weight of the flowers  just as it is looking good and you  have visitors coming and you want everything to look right….so a touch of grannies rope knitting to hoist it all up so it will not damage itself even more. We now have a new line of the list of autumn jobs....give the Broom the Carentan chop…

 

 

 

And finally the nasturtiums I transplanted in May to the mound are looking good and healthy despite the lack of rain so we took down the rabbit protection and I have a splash of colour and this garden is officially called nasturtium mound …….