Home & Garden
SIMPLY LIVING FRANCE
PAGE 32
Clare’s French Country Diary
W
ell, Spring is almost upon us as I write this. Although, it has been the weather I call ‘4 seasons in one day’ for the last few days! Sleet showers, then brilliant sunshine plus a howling gale then minus temperatures overnight. I find the stirrings of springtime quite magical, the earth is waking up here in the northern hemisphere and nature knows what to do! Glimpses of snowdrops are closely followed by the ‘tete a tete’ mini daffodils, then my taller daffodils join the yellow party in the front garden.
When we moved into the house, there was no front garden, just quite a bit of land, with nothing but grass, (well nettles in large amounts!) so we added the fence across from the shed and garage, to join onto the house and create the front garden, with the help of friends Suze and Ed. Shortly after, gates were added too. Friends Martin and Kerry built the stone pillars and then the wooden gates, found second hand at the local charity Emmaus, were finally hung into place. After that of course, I wasted no time in digging out and planting three new borders. A lot of bulbs were added, and irises too, as they come into their own in May in our area and are such amazing vivid colours. A wise friend once told me to add plants in each season, so you will then have plants which flower all year around. Clever that, so if you are in the garden centre in April and there are cherry trees in blossom, you can more or less say, each April your cherry trees will blossom for you. Talking of blossom, our Mirabelle tree (a type of small plum) started her first blossoms on 19 February this year, just missing Martin’s birthday. I really hope the flowers don’t catch the early morning frost, as the last 2 years this has resulted in zero mirabelles from our tree. It is too big a tree to protect with fleece so there is
