My garden in June.

A little while ago I gave you an idea of what my garden looked like, well now I can show you how it's looking  at the end of June. Hope you like what you see.




This is a selection of the soft colours.

 

This year we have not had the best of weather, a cold May & a rainy June. We were wondering if summer was ever going to arrive, as mid-summers day has been and gone. However it's finaly arrived in full force, it's hot with clear blue sky and the plants are beginning to look healthy and are blooming well, so I'm happy. I've always been a sunshine girl.
Today the floral committee from our local commune arrived with their clip boards. I told you about my first experience of this, not long after we arrived to live in France. After 22 yrs they have not changed very much.
However I did notice that they had a a new member who knew her flowers. The others are quite happy just chatting about everyday life, as long they can have a look around, they're quite content. This committee has to pass first, they select 2 or 3 from the commune to be entered into the department competition, then a week later the horticulturist committee comes to judge, that's when the important part starts. The  local French people seem to be very curious , I'm not sure if it's because I'm English, but now we have lots of English in our area, so I can no longer think of it as 'Un coin perdu'  (a place miles from anywhere)



Surfinias
If you don't know this flower, it's certainly one to have for it's heavenly perfume.
& the vibrant colours. these are planted in troughs so they tumble down over the balcony.

The pale mauve flower is  double Surfinia.
Look at the lovely marbling on the petals
This one is my favourite.

In a few more weeks these troughs will be totaly hidden

 by the profusion of the flowers.



 This antique wine bottle corker was found in a brocante.
I've had it a long time
but now found just the place to show it off.



Hope you liked what you saw.

I'll be back again soon showing more of my hanging baskets as they progress.

A bientot

Barbara Lilian

French windows.

I just love the windows on old French houses.

This cottage belongs to some friends of mine who live in Limoges city & now that they have retired, they come to their country home as often as they can. Later I will show some pictures of their garden, it's a true country garden & I'm sure would be everyones dream garden. 



 I think I love the windows on old French houses because the windows open in, inviting the warm sunshine indoors. However the French people always close the shutters when it's hot to keep the house cool. I love to see old lace curtains looking more like lace handkerchieves than the style I was used to seeing in England. I hated lace curtains when I was a child. It made me think of dark rooms and old people. I never really new any old people as my Grandmother passed away when I was very young, and I don't have many memories of her. But I do remember the lace curtains in her house covering the whole of the windows, making the Victorian period house even darker. So have a peep at some of the windows I love.

This window is on the front of my daughters house.

A friends cottage

One of the windows my husband put in

when renovating the old barn, which we now live in.  

He was able to find the granite to make the surround

from a barn which had fallen down. 

This is the view from the window of La Petite maison

which we rent for holidays.

I hope you liked peeping through the windows.

a bientot

Barbara Lilian

My store-cupboard.

It's that time of year again, it's when we move out of our home for the summer. It might sound strange but we rent our property for 2 months as a holiday home during the summer months and we stay at our daughters. I move all my personal things into our store cupboard. Sometimes things stay in there & are forgotten about, these are what I call unimportant items.

Yesterday I was looking for something which I thought maybe I'd put away in my 'Store cupboard'. I must have been in there for a good hour, doing what my other half calls 'taking a trip down memory lane'. as I usually end up  look through old photo albums or boxes of bits I'd brought with me to France.  I didn't find what I was looking for, but I did find so many lovely things I'd put there and had forgotten all about.

When I first moved to France I visited 'Flea markets' and Brocantes most weekends, locally and around the area, buying bits and pieces that took my fancy, then when I saw the same things again I bought more and so my collections grew from the various items which at that period of my life I'd taken a liking to collect. Later after we had moved house, most of these had been put into my store cupboard. 

 Now that I am following other like minded bloggers & share their passions of vintage collectibles,  I've seen similar items on their blogs,which I loved, so it made me think about my own hidden treasures. Which now I have brought out of the store cupboard and I'm  going to find a new place to show them off, then I can enjoy looking at them again.

So if you would like to stay around for a while I'll share some of my lovely treasures with you, which have been hiding in my store cupboard for quite a long time. I hope you will enjoy seeing them as much as I have.

Some of my collection of glass ware, which have come up shining beautifully after a dip in hot water & vinegar.

 

A biscuit or sweet basket.

An old hand mirror with my initial on.

A bientot

Barbara - Lilian

My garden in France.

 I have a love for France and in the short time since I created my blog, I can see that so many of you share the same feelings. Maybe it's a holiday you've spent somewhere in France  where ever it might be and you have  wonderful memories, which you've taken back home. So I felt I wanted to share a selection of pictures I have taken of my garden from summers here at our home in France.

The arbour with roses & honeysuckle.

So French

Colourful Geraniums in pots.

A colourful mixture of herbs & annual flowers.

This is our well. After my man gave it some TLC

Which we can now use to water the flowers.

One of my many hanging baskets.

I can't wait for this summers flowers to be in full bloom. I'll show the results in a few weeks time.

Hope you'll come back to me to see the results.

Enjoy your gardening where ever you are even if it's only a window box.

a bientot

Barbara Lilian

Country style - French wedding.

I can't believe our little girl is celebrating her 17yrs wedding anniversary today.
At that time she was living in Canada, and working there together with her French boyfriend. The day she phoned to tell us she was coming back to France to get married, we couldn't have been more excited. Then she asked me to make her wedding dress. The Atlantic Ocean between us, did she realise what a task she was giving me, the answer to that is No. She just said, 'don't worry I'll send you my measurements & just choose something simple, you know what would suite me.' She had always been a come day go day sort of girl, never wanting anything girly or frilly. So the ball was in my court ! What a responsibility for me.
I chose a raw silk material in ivory. The style was a fitted jacket with lots of covered buttons for a simple detail, & a large bow on the back at waist level, I knew she wouldn't mind a bow. The sleeves had puffed shoulders & were tight at the wrists. The skirt was gathered and full length. She was in contact with me weekly, saying she was losing weight every day. As she was only arriving back home to our floral village just a week before the big day, my heart was in my mouth hoping and praying it would fit. I was so glad I had chosen a separate top & skirt it made it easy to make the last minute adjustments. The dress was perfect.  and she said she knew I would do just the perfect dress for her.

My husband & me with our lovely daughter.

Ready to leave the house.

What a wonderful experience for our family to have a French country style wedding for our daughter.The tradition of having the groom arriving at the house to find his bride waiting for him. All the guests tooting the horns of their cars in file behind the bride, with the groom at the tail end, driving to the Mairie, which is the town hall for the civil ceremony. What a wonderful experience which we would never have known about if we hadn't made our move to live in France.

Some antique bloomers I found.

for part of the English traditon of something old

Our lovely daughter.

A selection of photos.

Unfortunatly before digital, so not very clear.

But an idea of a wonderful wedding day.

Country style - hanging baskets. at my home in France.

I'm a bit later than usual preparing my hanging baskets this year, as the weather was more than just April showers ! We had so much rain & it was cold for the time of the year, I knew the flowers wouldn't profit with the temp. being so low. so hence the delay. Now the sun is shining and the temperature is looking good, so I've made a start and completed 5. Only another 12 more to do! Then there's the troughs & window box's, better get a move on. Last year I changed the theme & chose cane woven baskets, lined with plastic. They looked pretty & country style, but I wasn't happy with the results after a long hot summer, I've now gone back to the good old reliable ones which  I've had for years. Time will tell, I hope 'my man' who waters them, will be happy. he doesn't like change.

I never like the baskets when they're first planted, I always think they look straggly. I am a bit impatient and I do know the plants need time to grow before they can give a beautiful floral display.  So I'm keeping my fingers crossed for good results. The following photos are from a previous year. I'll show this years display in a few weeks when I'm happier with how they look.

I have a lot of work in front of me, so I'll catch up with you as they progress.

a bientot.

Barbara Lilian

Frogs / Froggies & Frogs legs.

We all know the French are known as Froggies & also well known for eating frogs legs.

This is just a tale of tadpoles to frogs, from our river.

For the past week or two the frogs down by the river opposite our house have been making their usual croaking sound which we always hear at this time of the year, meaning the river will now be amass with spawn and tadpoles. I'm sure most children who live near to a pond or stream have trotted off to try to catch tadpoles, in a net or a homemade device from a used water bottle, cut and taped to a branch of a fallen tree which is what my other half did for our grand children ( he can always make something out of nothing) we call him MacGyver ! But he's always there to lend a helping hand & loved and known as Pops. Shortly after this photo was taken the youngest bent down too far, need I paint the picture ! I'll always remember this day.

Two of my grandsons catching tadpoles in our stream.

Not sure if they will still want to do it this year, as now they are getting older.

My childhood memories are of going with my two brothers, carrying a jam jar which my mother had tied with a piece of string around the top to make a handle, we'd walk a mile to the local pond to find the frogs spawn; which we brought home to wait anxiously for eggs to turn into tadpoles and then finally frogs. I don't  ever remember seeing them develop into frogs, something usually happened, either it was next doors cat who attacked them or our own dog knocking the bowl over trying to chase the cat away. Lovely times.

AHOY there !!

Thought these pictures were amusing, taken at our swimming pool.

Sitting on top of the world.

I'll be back soon, hope you will to.

Barbara Lilian.

A posy 'du Muguet.'

One of the many traditions still celebrated in France, on the 1st. May is to give someone a sprig of Lilly of the Valley. This tradition was started in 1561 by King Charles 1X. he decided to offer all the ladies of the court a sprig of Muguet. 'Apporter du bonheur'  (to bring happiness ) to the person you give it to. What a lovely tradition.
My 1st sprig of Muguet was given to me by my old friend Leonard. Sadly his wife had died shortly before we arrived to live in the village. I only wish I could have met her we would have had a lot to share.  I was told she had always loved flowers and had planted them here & there around the village, any where she thought needed brightening up. The village was known by everyone as 'Le Village Fleuris' This was one of the reasons we were attracted to it. We had been searching for some time with an 'Immobilier' for a house to use as a holiday home, at that time not realising how soon it would become our home! On the last day before we were due to return to England he showed us a cottage style house with a barn bigger than the house and much more land than we could ever use. As soon as we entered the village I fell in love with it,  there were flowers everywhere. Which 22 yrs ago at that time was not the No.1 priority. Most of the land around the houses in the village were full of rows of vegetables & fruit trees. Later I did ask an old lady in my poor French, along with sign language why she didn't have any flowers and her reply was, 'if you can't eat it, why grow it'. Yes there was the odd pot of Geraniums at the front door, but rare to see the whole village planted with flowers.
I was in my element & over the time I introduced hanging baskets and a vast variety of flowers they had  never seen before, which I mixed together. I was told by one of the villagers 'that's not how you do it, each type of flower must have it's own pot'. However I plodded along doing my own thing, putting up the odd hanging basket, & filling any old enamel bucket or basket I'd found amongst all the debris which had been left in the barn. Outside was beginning to look quite colourful, even though we were all still sleeping in the one room, while the rest of the house was under renovation. 
One day at the beginning of July I looked out of the window & saw several people wandering around the area at the front of the house, at that time I could hardly call it a terrace; each with a clip board and pencil all taking particular interest in the hanging baskets, which were full of trailing plants, looking OK; but not to my usual standard, however it was the best I was able achieve with the choice I could find in the area. Thankfully I was able to understand more French than I could speak, so I gathered they were judging my floral efforts. I had no idea they were the local commune floral committee !  judging for a competition I had not entered. I was told, 'it didn't matter, they would enter my name for me.' How simple can things be, it could only happen in France. So that was the beginning of the yearly floral competition for me. Never realising how competitive the rest of the villagers would become. I'll continue that story some other time.

My first petite bouquet of 'Muguet' will always bring back happy memories of my time spent in 'Le Village Fleuris'

                                

I hope my posy 'apporte du bonheur'

 will bring happiness to all my readers.





Sowing seeds at the right time - in tune with the moon.

Having had so many failures of seed germination, this time I will do what my old French neighbour Leonard told me to at our 1st house in a tiny village in the 'heart of nowhere' as our English friends described it. Leonard would arrive with match boxes full of seeds, usually courgette, which I duly put into the ground when I managed to find time in between being the labourer, for my husband during our renovation period. He always gave me instructions of when & how to sow the seeds, at least I think that's what he was telling me; as my of understanding of the French language at that time was very limited. So for all I knew, he could have been saying 'put them in a pan of boiling water & cook for 20 mins'. Everyday I  would go to my little veg plot, which indecently grew to a whole field the following year, more about that another time. I waited anxiously for the little blighters to show some sign of growth, & when nothing appeared I'd sneak down the lane to  Leonard's potager to see how his were doing. Leonard's were always up well before mine & at that time I didn't realise how important it was to sow them at the specific time he had told me. Which was in tune with THE MOON. I just thought the precise instructions given were because I was English & he thought I didn't have a clue what to do & he was right. It's taken me a long time to realise that's the way the old folks have always sown their seeds. God Bless old Leonard, I say old with affection as he was a dear man, always laughing, up at the crack of dawn to tend to his potager before the day became too hot, unlike me who tended to my veg, plot if & when I found time. Another lesson I had to learn. When I came to France my gardening attempts were full of mishaps, only ever having grown tomatoes in a grow bag in England. I had a lot to learn.
I'm afraid to admit it but I still have the attitude of  ' it has 2 chances, it grows or it goes '
So this time my seeds will be sown in 'tune with the moon'. That's if the rain stops long enough for me to get out in my garden.

http://www.plantea.com/planting-moon-phases.htm
http://www.gardenersworld.com/how-to/projects/fruit-and-vegetables/how-to-grow-tomatoes-in-a-growing-bag/337.html

http://www.maison-deco.com/jardin/conseils-jardinage

Indoors wth a Home and Garden magazine.

It's really April showers weather in my corner of France. I'd hoped to do all sorts in the garden, but now at my age I only work outside when it's NOT raining. Gone are the days when I'd be a busy Bee doing things like there was no tomorrow. So I've spent some time indoors browsing through some of my old magazines. One in particular it's Danish, unfortunately I can only look at the pictures but the decorating ideas from other peoples homes are so lovely it's well worth it. I usualy bring it back with me when we go to visit our grandchildren. http://www.isabellas.dk/

Isabellas magazine

The wild flowers in the garden, are just as pretty as the cultivated ones.

This morning having taken a stroll around the garden & the field, I found so many pretty wild flowers. I thought I'd share them by posting a few photos.
When I lived in England it was'nt considered a proper garden if the weeds were left to flower, however since I've lived here in the countryside of France, our house which was once a barn being part of a small farm it's literally in the middle of farm land, so really it's  plonked in the middle of a field.
I needed to change the way I thought about my garden. Now I let all the wild flowers grow in abundence, woe betide if my husband dares to put a blade any where near them untill they are past their best.
I was excited to find the first blue bells down by the stream not many yet; but hopefully the river banks will soon be a mass of blue & yellow from the Marsh-marigolds & the Yellow Iris . But the best find was some Cow-slips, I haven't seen them near my house before. But the scent that thrilled me the most came from the wild Violets. People do say the wild ones don't have any perfume, well they need to visit the French country-side.

I know we are not supposed to pick the wild flowers, but as they were growing on my land, I felt I had the right & was privileged to be able to do so.

 A posy of wild flowers from the field in a 'Tasse de Cafe'

The Cow- slips

A Carpet of wild Violets in the banks.

The Common Dandelion

when you look at the form of the petals it's  a very pretty flower.

As we say, 'Wet the bed' but known as 'Pissenlit' in French !

Garden work in progress.

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