Spring 2010

Well, the snow has gone and spring has arrived in Colondannes. The winter has been very cold and long, as it has over most of Europe and the UK, but at long last the garden is alive and during our Easter visit the grass needed to be cut and we gave it a feed to try to kill as many of the weeds as possible, with Verdone. It really does seem to work. We did the normal bit of weeding, which really seems to be diminishing and maybe all of the hard work is taking effect

The Moles have been active, but only a little and we saw no new mole holes during the recent visit. I am sure they will return so we bought some explosions to put down the new holes, when they return.

We were again invited by our french neighbour for dinner again and had a lovely evening. She made good use the chicken she killed in the Autumn and they made a lovely meal.

Our visit past by all too quickly yet again and we look forward to the planned visits in May.

Springtime in France

Easter 2009 arrives and our visit finds the garden in bloom, the daffodils bursting and the grass just stating to grow fast. Our planning and work over the preceeding few years is starting to produce the results we hoped .

We decided to plant slow growing, small and dwarf daffodils in the hope that they would not flower until mid to later April each year and they woudl not droop; it seems to have worked. Mind you, it does not look like there are 500 bulbs planted!

The mulched grass cuttings appear to help keep the weeds to a miminum and hopefully continued application will help improve water retention over the coming months and years. We have also used wood bark in the borders and particulary the Herb beds, which is working.

We were given a selection of Willow that has been planted in the trellis I built and these will hopefully provide a screen and work with the Clematis and Wisteria we planted.

Joshua has created a video show of the garden and we have included some views here, so please take a look .