In the autumn, after liberal application of weedkiller, Fabien & Vicky started to dig and layout the gravel garden, a relatively informal planting of grasses and perennials in the area beyond the pool, the formal topiary garden below the front terrace, christened by Peter “Petit Versailles”, and the border round the pool which they planted with lavender and 4 small olive trees. for decorative purposes only, we do not expect them to fruit.
In the meantime I made a start at digging out the couch grass and other multiple weeds on the north side of “walnut terrace”, where I believe there must have been a flowerbed at some time in the past, long overgrown.
We were also actively pursuing Groupe Solaire and EDF to dig a trench from garage to electricity pylon in order to connect our photovoltaique panels to the grid and start earning us some return on our investment. It took us until November to discover that Groupe Solaire had mislaid our contract, and when they managed to find it and send us a copy, that it contained a transcription error confusing out French and UK addresses. Several months of frustrating correspondence ensued. The trench was finally completed, at the third attempt, in April and by May we were finally connected.
In September, on Jan’s instruction, we made at trip to the brocante in Riberac where we acquired various items of Garden “furniture” including the gloriette and an urn for Petit Versailles, given the weight of these items we were fortunate that Fabien & Vicky were around to help with the unloading on delivery!
Digging in Petit Versailles turned up some interesting items, including an electric cable, clearly connected to something deep in the ground. Work stopped until the electrician had been summoned to establish that it was not live or connected to anything in the house. It remains a mystery.
Electricity was something of a feature of that autumn. October storms resulted in a power cut which lasted a couple of days for those of us living “up the hill” while maddeningly power was restored in town within hours, so we could look out and see the lights while attempting to cook on the gas hob with head torch and candles. I was papering and painting the blue bedroom at the time, my excuse for any imperfections in the final result.
We also discovered the limitations of the “re-enclencheur” sold to us by the burglar alarm supplier as the solution to the power going off when we were away. It blew out the main fusebox during our absence in September. Dominique managed to get it fixed ( and emptied my freezer into her own, wonderful woman). We were advised not to reconnect it, but Peter knew better, it blew the main fusebox for the second time in January and is now officially redundant.
The bare floorboards in the upstairs bedroom were floored over with “parquet” in November.
By December planting in Petit Versailles was complete
and we discovered that deer are fond of Eunonymus, despite our attempts to cover over the feature plants in the centre of the box beds they were literally eaten to death and have been replaced with something less tasty. Happily neither the box nor the santolina seems to appeal to them, and although there has been some attrition the roses are just about hanging in there, although the deer do the pruning for me.
The deer proved less interested in the Gravel Garden, where the autumn planting was restricted to grasses, the perennials were to wait until spring. The bunnies however proved grateful for this variation in their diet, or perhaps just irked by our digging in a territory they had previously considered their own, since they dug up a fair number of plants without eating them.
In December Peter decided to construct the gloriette, which had arrived in multiple sections, himself. He started by putting the top circle together, put up the sides, discovered he could not lift the top onto the sides, it is very heavy, so took it all apart and started again, a noble effort.
Over the winter I started clearing the long neglected iris beds. The builder eventually came and built us a splendid reinforced garden wall, and promised he would be back soon to terrace the area between house and garage and tile the steps to the pool and the path from pool to the pool controls in the garage, an uncomfortable walk in bare feet. We were encouraged by the pile of stones he left as proof of his intention to get started and in late April work did indeed begin.
We looked forward to watching our new garden bloom.