It’s been an eventful summer, no doubt about that, and what a wet one! Though it all started calmly and sunnily enough.
We arrived on June 12, and the roses were already wonderfully in bloom, and continued to be so through the whole hot and dry month and into the start of July.
The garden was open for the first time this year on June 17, and every Saturday afternoon thereafter, except for June 24, when our close neighbours celebrated their 10th wedding anniversary in the garden with 80 guests.
It was a scorcher of a day, and even during the lay ceremony, folk were diving for the shade of the trees as soon as they could. The addition of a crow’s nest on the pirate ship treehouse proved extremely popular with the younger guests…….
The huge willow tree in the courtyard had split and half of it had fallen onto the central shrub bed – that resulted in a lot of chainsaw action and heaps of logs for the fire. Our tractor mower spent almost all of the summer at the mower centre, returning to us for half a day every so often, just to break down again. Just what we didn’t need in a year when the endless downpours meant that the grass never even slowed its growth in August. Our expensively-restored tractor finally made its proper re-appearance in September. The iffy weather didn’t stop us from holding some jolly get-togethers with friends and family, though…
Chillies, tomatoes, basil, French marigolds (to deter whitefly) and cucumbers all got going nicely in the greenhouse, and the potatoes, broad beans, courgettes, runner beans, chard and lettuces all grew very well through the summer.
July and August were both very changeable months with a great deal of wind and rain; we didn’t have to worry too much about the watering, and the garden stayed very green and growing. On the other hand, lashing rain on Saturday afternoons meant fewer visitors, and it was such a shame for our young grandchildren when they came for their summer holidays – not half enough larking about in the garden or fun on the beach this year! We had made them a little mud-pie garden behind the Catalpa tree, but it was awash most of the time…….
That reminds me – the Catalpa flowered with glorious abandon this year (it obviously likes wet!) and our crops of figs, greengages, pears and plums were breaking the branches before we supported them with sturdy posts.
It has also been a truly wonderful year for butterflies, and insects of all kinds, though hornets were less of a problem than normal. The storks reared their three huge babies successfully, and deer, bats, hedgehogs and hares put in an appearance amongst all the merry rabbits and songbirds.
Nigel constructed a small viewing platform to offer a higher viewing point for visitors over the flower borders – clambering up into the treehouse would have offered a higher vista, but strangely wasn’t popular for the over-12s…..!
Drier, calmer weather in September meant a few more lovely evenings on the terrace and beautiful resurgence of rose blooms just as the ornamental grasses and asters got into their stride. The end of another special Le Hot summer.
Manoir Le Hot 