Poppies and returns

The poppies are out, and seem to be at their very best right now. Some pics below.

We have just said goodbye to a weekend party of guests who came for a family reunion. They were so pleased with their stay that they have already booked to come again next year, and for a longer stay. Can't be bad.





Pattie's Plum is always a favourite














Aurora is as bright and fresh on the eye as sherbet is on the tongue













The red poppy "Falklands" has pinked edges. As do pinks.

Introductions

It's time to introduce you two local characters: Marie who runs the restaurant just down the road, and Noël, her chef there. Between them they prepare lunches and evening meals for the tourists who visit the caves and the river valley, and they also cater for the numerous private parties who book the restaurant for family events, birthdays, etc.

We shall be running some week-long cookery classes with them later this year, designed to introduce English family cooks to some of the traditional French delicacies of the region. We plan to be tasting wines, cooking complete meals using ingredients like local creams, cheeses, cider and stronger apple-based drinks, and visiting local food producers such as the chocolate factory and wild boar farm.

Should be a fun week. We are working out some adverts for the UK press at the moment. Watch this space!





Marie runs the restaurant














Noël is her chef














The restaurant

Great big steaming heap of manure

The best thing about horses (in my view) is that garden plants like the manure they make. The second best thing about horses is that they make lots of it.

A lovely lady not far from me has two horses, and she has been carefully heaping up their droppings in a corner of her field, for a couple of years. It's wonderful stuff, well rotted, ideal for the garden. I have collected a few loads before, in my trailer, and arranged, this time with my Dutch gardening enthusiast friend, to visit again.

Collecting it is not without its hazards: last time my car got stuck coming out of the field, and the wife had to come and rescue me, bringing a pair of steel ramps to get me over the steep slippery bit. My Dutch friend was having none of this, leaving his car outside the field while I drove in (armed with ramps this time, just in case).

All was well. We filled my trailer and wheeled several barrow-loads each out of the field to his waiting car and trailer, and took them home. Now he wants to go industrial and hire a lorry and digger and collect the whole lot in one go. Economies of scale (and of effort) do make this attractive, but originally, I had, essentially, an inexhaustable supply that I didn't have to store, and could collect whenever I wanted. And it was free. Hmmm. Be careful what you wish for.




A trailer load for me














Some barrows for him

Sky Rockets

Blue in Blue

The lake lay blue below the hill.
O'er it, as I looked, there flew
Across the waters, cold and still,
A bird whose wings were palest blue.

The sky above was blue at last,
The sky beneath me blue in blue.
A moment, ere the bird had passed,
It caught his image as he flew.

This poem by Mary E Coleridge was set to music by Charles Villiers Stanford, and the song comes to mind as I contemplate the shades of blue in these iris.















Some time ago, on a certain Summer's evening, you could wander onto on the banks of the river Cam behind the colleges, and sit and wait for the arrival of a choir, seated on a raft of punts. And as the sun slowly set and darkness fell, they would sing for you ancient and modern songs, of which the above was one. And the end of the concert, in the dark, with lanterns lit, they would disappear back down the river, the only other sounds being the night insects and the splash of punt poles. Quite magical.

Beautiful lady

Perfumed and beautiful, Ena Harkness adorns my wall.

Snails

I don't take any great exception to having slugs and snails in my garden: the grass snakes, toads and birds eat them. But they cause devastation if they get into the wrong place, so I don't have any problem about putting down slug pellets either, to keep them off my plants when I'm not there to do it myself.

This magnificent specimen, a good three inches long, was trundling over my veg patch while I was working on it today, so he got a flying lesson just after this picture was taken.