No 10 in January

Last year we succeeded in stripping most of the overgrown ivy and honeysuckle off the back wall, but didn't have time to do any work on the rotting built-in garden furniture.

Progress on the garden is hampered by the continuing presence of the tile cutter and pieces of floor tile, which will not be removed until we have finished the floors indoors.

We removed the lowest pond - which was subsiding - a few years ago but haven't yet worked out what its replacement will be. Meanwhile, the former middle pond is now in danger of collapsing as the west wall is bulging...

The former dustbin park which we replaced with a planter

In the autumn we removed the plant bed dividers - they were wooden and had rotted badly; also, persistent roots had grown underneath them and could not be removed with the boards in place. Replacements haven't yet been decided on.

I did manage to get the badly overgrown hedge cut right back last year, but wait to see if it will thicken up in future - will need regular trimming anyway.

The back garden from the upstairs window

No 6 in January

 As we prepare to return to London for three weeks, this is how we're leaving our French garden:

Yvonne's corner

Blackberry wall

Sue's corner

Decking

Fruit trees

East front

Front

Blue, blue, my world is blue...

So, the storage box arrived and was put together (not without a few problems on the way) and was truly a revolting shade, so I was really keen to get the blue paint over the lurid orange. Two coats of paint were called for, 6 hours apart. This was successfully achieved on the strip at the base, and the next day I moved it into the living room - to get more light, as I prepared and painted the top. Just a few minutes away from finishing the second coat, I slipped - with the open paint can in my hand... and dropped it... disaster! Blue paint EVERYWHERE! On the TV, the DVDs and CDs beside it, the TV cabinet, the floor (fortunately tiled, not carpeted), the wall, the skirting board, the plugs and sockets... I used up nearly all the white spirit in the bottle cleaning up, and still didn't manage to get all of the paint off. The grout between the floor tiles is now pale blue where it should be grey, the TV looks dirty, and the cabinet could do with being completely re-varnished. Also, I lost about half the expensive paint in the process, and have blue fingernails and cuticles!! ¡Qué horror! 

OK; there is something positive to record. The weather has been dry and sunny - I've been able to oil the teak furniture, and lasure the deck board beneath the garden shower, so there has been some progress made as well as the painting of the storage box - which looks right in its new location. However, despite scrubbing the crazy paving with soap and water, there's a stained patch which hasn't come clean. I think dirty water has been lying there over some time and not draining away... we'll try and bore some drainage holes at the lowest points so it doesn't get worse.

A-spraying we will go...

Today was clear and dry, and - most importantly - not windy! so I took the opportunity to get out the pressure sprayer. For the last two years plants in our garden have been affected by Stephanitis pyri - small bugs which research says affect mainly pear trees; we don't have a pear tree but our apple, medlar and quince trees have all been affected. I've sprayed all these using a product I bought in Spain - Oleotion; this has an oil and an insecticide which get mixed together. I sprayed with this last year in the winter, and the problem was not so bad as in the previous year - but we still got bugs.

Worst of all is a big shrub in the front garden, a cotoneaster. This is the most difficult to deal with, as the bugs live on the undersides of the leaves, so can't be got at with the spray. I think I will have to prune this right back otherwise we won't be able to wipe out the pests.

The bug is known in French as "tigre du poirier" so I've taken to calling them the tigers in the garden.

Cushion store

We used to keep cushions for the garden furniture in the pool house... till it got wet and the cushions developed mould spots. Then we brought them indoors, but they are bulky and we try to keep the house as clutter-free as possible, so that's been an irritation. In our London garden we've had some plastic storage boxes for several years, and they seem to be pretty weather proof, so I looked for something similar here. The length of the biggest cushion was the determining factor; measurements indicated that I would be able to fit a large enough box in "Yvonne's corner", by just repositioning a few pots and stones.

Why "Yvonne's corner"? Well, the first year that the house was built - before we had done any landscaping - our great friend Yvonne came to stay in November. Despite the season, the sun was shining - and she was determined not to miss out, despite the fact that there was no garden. We found her catching a few rays in a corner of the garden which is sheltered from the westerly wind, sitting on a piece of cardboard as there was no grass! Ever since, that part of the garden has been "Yvonne's corner".

Back to the storage issue - an internet search revealed a box of the right dimensions on special offer (€84). Sadly it is orange - which does not fit with our colour scheme at all. However, further research revealed a type of paint which is designed to be used on plastic furniture... so the orange can be replaced. Order placed... delivery in 5-6 days. However, after placing the order I checked the price of the paint - €21.60 - which makes the full cost €105.60 - and I could have bought a blue one for €114. So by painting it myself I'll be saving less than €10!!!

Tool problem

One of the garden tools I bought a couple of years ago (out of guarantee, of course) but haven't used much is a Flora Best leaf vacuum. We get lots of leaves piled up in various parts of the garden and they could be turned into useful compost using the vacuum - so out it came, and I started filling up the bag. It didn't take long to notice that both my legs and the surrounding area were being sprayed with chopped up leaves... the collecting bag had split - at the most awkward place, just below its (permanent) attachment to the machine. It looked as if it had been given insufficient seam allowance, and had just pulled away from the stitching. After an unsuccessful attempt to stick it back together with duck tape, and an investigation of how expensive replacement machines are round here, I've had a go at stitching it back together using heavy duty cotton. So far so good - switching it on full power hasn't split the stitching. However, it's yet to be tested properly, as the rain has soaked the remaining leaves and I don't want to clog it up with wet leaves! Proper test on the next dry day...

... and then the rain

We did quite a bit of gardening yesterday, whilst the sun was shining... fortunately, as this morning we woke to persistent rain, and the forecast is for this to continue for three more days - and then it will snow! If the long range forecast is accurate, there won't be any work done in the garden before next weekend. We got the dormant trees pruned; not a long job really, mainly just removing crossing branches. We've also taken out the lowest hanging branches from the mulberry, and trimmed back the top growth on the quince.

The roses have been cut right back too, removing all the foliage. I'm concerned that they get black spot, and the books say this will recur as long as the rose is in the same position. I do hope this isn't right!

One of the problems with maintaining two gardens several hundred miles apart is the issue of water. In France, where we get very hot summer weather, I've installed automatic watering, in four separate systems - but we can't modify the settings while we're away, so each time we leave we have to guess what the weather will do before we return, to leave a suitable setting. Today of course, with the prospect of rain (or snow) every day this week, I've turned the systems off - with the exception of the system which feeds the plant pots under the porch. One of the jobs for this year will be to put valves in this system so that I can leave it connected for the porch but shut it off for the rest of the front garden.

Pommies processed

Another load of last year's fruit has now been processed - actually for the second time. When the pomegranates were ripe, we removed the seeds - several kilos - and stuffed them into the freezer, as we didn't have time to deal with them. Now they've been thawed out and juiced (quickly blitzed in the blender then strained through a jelly bag) they yielded 4.7 litres of juice. Some has just been bottled straight away, and one litre has been processed into "pomegranate molasses" using a recipe found at http://allrecipes.co.uk/recipe/14782/pomegranate-syrup.aspx. 

Winter colour

Japanese quince

Winter jasmine

Early bloom on Carolina jasmine

There's very little colour in the French garden at the moment - something I'll want to address in due course! The view from the kitchen window is good, with winter jasmine lining the driveway wall, and japanese quince in full bloom against the front wall. Along the side of the house the Carolina jasmine is just beginning to bloom, but at the back there is nothing flowering at all as yet. Here and there evergreens (ivy, olive, jasmine) mean that we don't have bare wood everywhere but there is still an overwhelming sense that most of the garden is "dead" at this time of year.

First preserves of 2013

The first fruit processing of 2013... medlar jelly! Really it should have been done in 2012 but we weren't at our French home at all at the end of the year - so by the time we got here in January the fruits were more than just "bletted" - some were dried out and useless. However enough remained for a good quantity of jelly - needed a visit to Emmaus to search out jamjars before this lot could be processed. Jamie Oliver's recipe was used (http://www.jamieoliver.com/magazine/blogs.php?title=medlar-jelly-recipe) - with the addition of a little pectin towards the end. Even with the pectin added the jelly is too runny for my liking - though the spills when bottling set hard enough! It will be fine for cooking though - should be good in sauces.