Help!

Tomorrow is the day, the weekend and the assistance has arrived from England to help.

But it's going to be 36/37 degrees over the weekend!!!!!!

Flat out

The pressure for the Open Garden day is building up, but the garden is looking good, even if we say so ourselves!

However, it's Murphy's law.  After a very wet Spring which brought on a lot of growth on the plants, and we saw things flowering for the first time, someone turned the tap off and we now have clear blue skies, hot sun, burning temperatures of 30+ and still a week to go in which to keep the plants alive ... watering, watering, watering.

We're also involved in tying to get maximum publicity for the event ...

Hopefully only one more mowing before the weekend.

Has it come to this?

Much as you might have thought that our lives revolve around gardening, I'm not a gardener.  I'm happy mowing or helping with 'heavy' landscaping jobs but I really prefer looking at a nice garden with a glass of wine in my hand.
But today was the day ... when I got down on my knees and hand weeded a bed.

The head gardener is under pressure this year with rampant growth caused by the exceptionally wet Spring and she is struggling to clear spaces in the beds for the summer bedding plants.  So ... extreme measures ... and I actually did some weeding!!!

Don't expect to see it too often.

Keep on running...

As Sue gets more and more involved with the Open Gardens organisation, we seem to be getting busier!  What with that and getting our own garden into shape for our opening at the end of June ... and with socialising of course!

Yesterday was a good example.

In the morning we went to support a lady who opened her garden for the day, about 50 minutes north-east of us.  A lovely garden with lots of roses blooming now.  We came home to grab a quick lunch and then went 40 minutes to an open garden to the west of us. Lots of mature plants and an array of superb Japanese Maples.  We then returned home for a cup of tea before going down to the municipal camp site to take a glass of wine (un verre d'amitié) with the mayor to celebrate the opening of the summer season.

The mayor gave the statutory speech after everyone had had a couple of plastic cups of Kir (white wine and a shot of cassis), grazed on the bowls of crisps and nibbles and also bowls of chips.

Then, to our surprise, we were all waiting for the chicken to finish being cooked!

The event had been advertised only as a glass of wine so dinner was waiting for us at home!  We hung around for a bit but there was no sign of anything being ready and then the thunder started as a storm approached.  At that point we made our getaway, which was just as well as the rain arrived about half an hour later.

Such is life in rural France.