Sunflowers!

July is sunflower season and we're in the midst of both the month and the fields of flowers. Here's a photo taken on our way back from the supermarket today. This scene will soon be in a painting, I think. There's a small area at the side of the road where I can park the car and a few meters farther along is a spot with this view. What could be better? The sunflowers are not as spectacular as they could be this year though; they really need rain. We had a very rainy, cold unpleasant spring but once summer started, exactly to the day, the weather turned sunny and hot. There has been no appreciable rain since June 21, unless we count a 5 minute shower a couple of weeks ago.

OK, back home. I thought I'd give you a tour of our garden. Here, both in English and in French, the word 'garden' means what we call a yard in America. As you'll see most of this garden isn't what we'd think of as a garden, since it's mostly lawn and trees.

Here's the steps going down into the garden. There's an arbor arching over the steps and it's covered with trumpet vine, a very popular ornamental plant here in France. John trimmed this vine this morning, making it easier to walk under the arbor. Before he trimmed it, even I had to duck down to walk under it.

This is the view from the bottom of the steps, the pigeonnier with another huge old trumpet vine arching over its facade. A lovely thing, but in need of much discipline! It's too late to give it a good pruning now, but it will get a severe chopping back in time. Right now, the trumpet vines are taking over the yard, completely covering one of the apple trees, for instance. Once the leaves fall, we'll have to have someone in to hack it back.

To one side of the pigeonnier, we've installed a clothesline, here in use. It's been easy washing clothes these past few weeks with all the sunny weather. The area to the left holds our picnic table and chairs. Beyond the clothesline is our orchard, with apple trees, plum trees and cherry trees. There are also two peach trees, one just to the right of the clothesline, and another in front of the house, both of which we were assured were almond trees. But the fact that the land under them is littered with old peach pits leads me to think they are indeed peach trees.

Beyond the orchard is what was, and will be again next year, a vegetable garden. By the time we had the garden cleared this year it was too late to plant much of anything. Yes, I could plant some things now, but first I'd need to have the space roto tilled, since it was weeds for the past 5 years. In this clay soil, now turned to marble with the drought, breaking ground with a spading fork is just not an option. Anyway, here's the garden, with a line of roses defining one side. At the rear of the garden are large trees and bushes, with the stream beyond. When Cedric was interested in clearing the yard - an interest that faded rather quickly - he was also interested in finding little steps that lead to the small stream, La Bournegue, that forms the rear border of our property. Here's one set of stone steps he dug out. He says there's at least one more set of steps along the stream and possibly more.

the other side of the vegetable garden is a hedge of Rose of Sharon bushes.

Beyond this hedge is what I call the forest. This is a deliciously cool spot on a hot day. In the distance you can see the small greenhouse and the garage. To the right of the trees in this photo, there's a lovely stone-edged raised bed, empty now, that will be fun to play with in the future.

There's two large walnut trees in the forest, this one giving the largest walnuts I've ever seen, to judge from the shells littering the ground under it - and hidden in the cellar by various wild creatures living there for the past few years.

And here's the driveway, with it's border of the high laurel hedge and large and heavy wooden gate opening onto the street.

From the street, you can see the remaining part of out domain, a small field en friche as they say in French, meaning gone wild, not used or tended to. Maybe in time it will be part of a horse paddock.

But next to it is a very much larger field with - sunflowers!

And so ends our tour of our little piece of French countryside. Hope you enjoyed seeing it.