Another One

It was John's turn to celebrate his 70th yesterday. His biggest present was a much appreciated day off from hard labour in the garden! Although hard work never seemed to hurt anyone as he had just read in the paper that his idol, Toko Shinoda (artist), had just had an exhibition in Tokyo at the age of 104 - although she did comment that she only paints now when she feels like it!

John managed to fit in some painting before we went to the catering college for an excellent lunch. We started with a fishey amuse bouche, followed by a fabulous monkfish, crab and shellfish ragout, rack of lamb with vegetable cannelloni and sweets from the trolley (good job we go back as far as the 70s).

In the afternoon he wanted to make our monthly visit to the garden "Jardin de Manoir" to asses the changes. Well the first change was that it was full of tourists. We had become used to our out of season visits where we were the only visitors and rather treated it like a walk around "our garden".
I will leave John to comment further on the garden in May but after much resistance I did manage to take this photo of him in the White Garden.

John's PS
It's a month since we last went to the gardens at Eyrignac and everything is now lush and green.  The Hornbeam hedging is amazing; it had grown shoots about 6 inches (15cms).  We found one of the groundsmen and asked what fertiliser they use and he said basically none!

17th March

23rd April

23rd May

Elsewhere, the spring bulbs have been replaced with New Guinea Impatiens and Cleomes ... and of course the roses are now bloomimg!

Shame about the growing number of tourists!!!