A country garden in France.

Our daughter dreams of one day having the time to make a garden & being able to find time to look after it. But having just spent a week at her home, I wandered around and saw such lovely focal points she never gets the time to enjoy.

So as my hubby had just bought himself a new camera, which does a lot more than my point & shoot, I took lots of photos, so sit back and enjoy my wander around her garden seeing it through my eyes.

 

Don't ask me why the chair was left in the 'potager'.

But I thought it deserved a photo to share.

A slow maturing Willow tree.
This is where her boys play rugby or football.

The boys bikes outside of the barn.
Probably left there till the next time they ride them.

Pretty wild flowers growing in the disused veg. patch.

The swing the boys used to play on when they were younger,
still hanging on one chain from a branch of a huge Chestnut tree.

The cockeral & his lady followers left free to roam.
These have recently replaced the previous batch,
 that one by one were attacked by a fox !!

The driveway leading to the house.
 A lovely variety  of trees.

A lovely typical cottage feel
Some of the Hollyhocks in front of the shutters.

The Walnut and Cherry trees, making a pleasant shady area
where we've enjoyed many meals shared with family & friends.

Buddlia shrub or more often known as a butterfly bush.

An arbour made from an old ladder which had been left in the barn
 when they bought their house.
 It did have roses growing on either side, but the Deer must have eaten them !

 

An old wire crate, where there had been wild strawberries growing in it.

 

The old well which has had doors put on

 to save any accidents when the boys were little.

So as you have seen, every garden has it's charm and doesn't have to be flowers all planted neatly in rows.

I love this garden, and hope you enjoyed sharing my photos.

 and when my daughter sees this, I hope she will enjoy seeing all the

 charmimg parts of her garden that she doesn't get time to see

 because she is so busy with her work.

I hope you will pop by again, when I hope to have had time to visit my friends garden.

A bientot

 Barbara Lilian.

Lavender posies

My wonderful memory of my visit to the Lavender fields in Provence.
This photo was taken on Mont Ventoux.

Today I started to collect the Lavender from my garden to make my posies.
I make lots of these during the month of August.
A little gift to offer to a friend or neighbour.

Tied with some pretty satin ribbon

Here's how I make the ribbon posies.

Not long after we moved to live in France we went with our French neighbours to the Provence region and stayed with her cousins family. I remember sitting in the shade under a huge tree, the wonderful perfume of lavender was everywhere and I was watching the father who had a bunch of lavender on his knee and a ball of thick string. I was intrigued wondering what he was doing, he beckoned me to come & sit beside him and saw that he was making a very primitive version of the ones I have since made using pretty ribbon.

 

 

 

Some years later a friend bought this book for me, so now every summer I make these posies.

If you don't know how to make them,these diagrams will give you an idea of the stages.

 

 

The posy needs to be made straight after the Lavender has been picked as the stems need to be supple so that they can bend easily over the flower heads. I find it easier to weave the ribbon between two stems together. The number of stems I used for a small posy like the photo shown above is 22. Depending on the size you wish to make, the number of stems when divided by two should always be an odd number, so that you can make the weave regular.

I'm sure most of you will have some Lavender growing in your garden,

 so have a try at making a Lavender ribbon posy.

 

Hope you enjoy making your Lavender posy. as much as I did.





A bientot

Barbara Lilian

The downside of the joys of living in the country.

I was just getting the hang of creating my blog, when the lights went out . Yes.. power failure, so out came the candles. We never get to know why. If it goes on for more than an hour, sometimes our nearest neighbour who lives 1km. away will pop round in his car to ask if we have power. So I decided to have an early night 9.0 pm. in bed, means an early start the next day. So that's the good side, up early & ready to get stuck in with the ongoing project in the garden. I'll post some photos later, if I can remember how I did it.

Welcome to the 1st page of my new blog.

Welcome to my blog. As yet I'm not quite sure what path it will folow, as I dabble in so so many things ...    at the moment being Springtime my priority is the garden, so the watercolour painting has gone on hold, but there's always meals to be cooked & cakes & puddings to be baked. A gift for someone, so that's usualy a quick cross stitch or a patchwork item sometimes a pretty posy from the flowers in the garden or wild flowers from our field. So I hope amongst some of my interests you might find something you like, if not on the 1st visit maybe another time.

When I started to learn water colour painting late in my life, I began to search on the internet & after reading several blogs & signing up to the ones I really liked; I became more interested  in blogging or whatever one calls it ! I had always said, 'why would anyone ever want to read about what other people are doing' Well that's what I've been doing, so now I've decided to make a blog of my own. I don't know if anyone will be interested in what I do, have done or would like to do, but whatever.. here goes & even if no one logs onto my blog to have a peep, I will have a collection of my memories for my Grandchildren to read when I'm gone.

I don't know how often I will be posting things on it, that will depend on the spare time I can find in between the new garden project I am helping my lovely husband create. I am the planner/designer of the project & he is the do-er. Plus all the other 101 things I have on the go (probably like most of you out there) The rest of the garden is badly in need of some TLC which was badly hit this winter by the really low temp. & very hard frosts we experienced. We lost so many shrubs, I'm not sure where to start. Also the holiday season will soon be upon us & we have two holiday gites which we let, so that takes up a lot of my time.

I will make a big effort to keep things coming, even if it's only a picture or two of things I have seen or have been doing, which makes me feel happy & I hope will be pleasing to you out there, where ever you are !

 I'll try & see if I can successfuly post a couple of photos !   then I'll sign off.

The end of Winter for the Blue-tits.





Daffodils in the wild part of the garden. 

 

The 1st Tulips 

Bye for now

Barbara Lilian