We decided to create a circle in yew.  Large enough for us to sit in, or for one person to sit in and contemplate whatever it is they want to – to mediate, or pray or simply enjoy the space.  
Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less, 

Withdraws into its happiness; 

The mind, that ocean where each kind 

Does straight its own resemblance find, 

Yet it creates, transcending these, 

Far other worlds, and other seas; 

Annihilating all that’s made 

To a green thought in a green shade. 

Andrew Marvell

We used the money I was kindly given as a leaving gift from work, for 36 yew plants, (we bought a crab apple ‘Golden Hornet’ as well, that is in the potager).

So we had the plants over the summer and they were irresistible to a certain puppy dog who loved nothing more than tearing around the garden with one in his mouth, pulling apart the roots.  Although we moved them to somewhere dog proof they were in small posts and dried out really easily, and were desperate to get them in the ground, which we did do in October when the weather turned from scorching.  But all we were able to do was delineate the circle by me standing in the middle with a string and John walking around me with a can of spray paint.   We needed an entrance to the circle and decided to put a ‘baffle’ in front of the entrance, so that it was private.

Aaaaaanyway…months later and the little yew plants are becoming completely submerged by the grass and weeds around them.  Here is one almost submerged:

So on Friday we decided to excavate all around them and put a thick layer of compost on to suppress the weeds. God but it was hard work. We only did half the circle and some of that we had had a go at previously so were not starting from scratch but it was exhausting. Each spadeful of weeds weighed what felt like a ton and had to be dug down and prised unwillingly out of the ground. Each spadeful of compost had to be unloaded from the trailer and put into the barrow and wheeled over. Each sod we lifted out was carried over to a dent in the field and laid down to compost.

We only managed just under half of it when we collapsed in sweaty heaps – early March and 20 degrees in south west France

So you can see the semi circle and the plants nicely mulched.  Next week we will finish it off.
‘A green thought in a green shade’

Feels like spring is here.

A few photos from the garden this morning.

These daffs are in “Audrey’s garden” named for John’s mum.  Full of white roses, for Yorkshire.
The grape hyacinths with their lovely pale frill at the bottom of the bells,(below) are planted at the base of a fig tree ‘Rouge de Bordeaux’ (apt) that John’s sister, Ann and her husband gave us as a wedding present. The figs have a really beautiful taste.  

This is peach blossom, for those flat white peaches you get in summer.  We had them every day on honeymoon in Nimes. The tree is in the gravel garden that we are putting together, inspired by Beth Chatto.  If only we could afford more gravel! 

The irises have got very congested and are about to be moved into the iris bed we are making in the Japanese garden, the climbing rose on the left is a gorgeous deep deep red, variety unknown, and the one hardly seen on the right is a rambler ‘Wedding Day’ that my mum and dad got us for Christmas.  We are going to train it around the front door.   We also got ‘kiftsgate’ – going over a pergola (as yet not made/bought) at the entrance to the potager, ‘veichenblau’ – going along the front fence, and a Rosa Spinissismosa (probably spelt that wrong) – in the cardoon border by the potager. 

 N

The sky it forms a leaden grey
The rains a sheeting down,
Be honest though the forecast did rightly say
Tomorrow you’ll be wearing a frown.

For that day you’ll be cutting bamboo in a storm
On a slope that will get muddier,
Although you’d prefer your arse on a form
It’s better than mulching the Buddlia.

And as it comes down from heaven like stair-rods
And the whole garden resembles a lake
Remember, you’re not moving sods
Or weeding or tying your plants to a stake.

You’re sat in the kitchen, with tea in your hand
It’s warm, it’s pleasant, you know where your at
The wines in the box, so it’s a little bit bland
At least it’s not missing like the kit-Kat.

O for the hob nob it’s golden brown
O for the rich tea a-sinking down,
That silts up my cup and sugars my teeth
À dentists friend and a workers relief.

Give me your kit-Kat. Give me your wispa
Your midget gems and that heavenly mars ba’.
O suck not the gob-stoppers tangy ball
It’s better that I remove them all.

It’ll save you from sin if I take all the biscuits
The vienesse fingers, the shortbread, the thing is
I’ll help you stop eating these sweet confections
By salving my current sad recollections!

O bring me your hobnobs of golden brown
The rich- tea that’s sinking down.
O give me the Jaffa, the custard cream
The bourbon pack tell me it’s not a dream.
I’ll be good till Christmas on vegetable bakes
Eat salads and tuna that comes in flakes
But on that day let Saint Nick be on time
With chocolates and sweeties and the odd glass of wine.

Are you a dog owner?

Ever had a dog or looked after one?

Yes – then carry on reading, the rest of you can, as monopoly would have it – advance to Mayfair, before picking up £200 and having another turn around the board.
OK now they’ve gone we can all wipe those fixed grins off our faces and admit that we all just landed on ‘supertax’.
This is not to say that we all don’t love our dogs to death. I have particular warm feelings about my dog, as an instance last week when I found him on the table eating my turkey, or the other morning when on our walk in a howling gale – warm, even very warm feelings.
But today let’s talk ‘woofs’.
Is your little chap or chapess a single or multiple woofer?
It needs to be said that Cedric ( Mr Cedric unless you’ve been formally introduced) is a quiet dog up to a point. Chase around like a nutter, dig holes where you don’t want them, yep all of that but when is the first ‘ woof’ of the day?
Well to be fair it varies. There is the chase down to the bottom of the garden when the two old dogs from the village drag their old boy around, but I’m not sure it really counts.
The ‘tug of war’ sessions, that’s more grunting and groaning and possibly whinning, in fact Cedric does a good line in whining.
Nope, I think that Cedders is more of an ‘announcer’ you know the sort, it’s a kind of ‘This is Cedric reporting from the garden for the BBC’ or ‘ere, get off my land’ thing. And to that extent he’s definitely a serial woofer.

But when?

Well for us I think it a fairly late in the day, Cedders is much more likely to start up early evening and that seems to be when all the others in the village start as well. It’s so noticeable I think they’ve got it written into some private contract, and that’s the woof that I think really counts, solid on all four legs, load up the diaphragm, point nose into the air at a good forty five degree angle and ……

Woof, woof, woof ……….woof.

It’s easier for your dog to understand Cicero than for a poor man to deal with governments. The proverbs of O’Shaunessy Ch2 L 10-11

Si può ottenere solo sangue da un politico se si paga.
Old Scicilian saying

It is with great relief and a sense of profound joy that I can announce that we are several hundred euros poorer than we were yesterday. Thank God! Those euros are a heavy note, all those countries gathered together on the one piece of paper really weigh you down, and they’re imbued with the characteristics of each one,from the upright Germans with their ‘save for a monsoon in Berlin policy’ to the Italian ‘what’s tax?’ ethic, and all the avenues inbetween where those naughty euros can disappear into accounts less regular.

Yes, the Carte Griselda has arrived, the government has had its hand in my pocket and lightened my load – can I get an ‘allelujah’?.

But, was it hard?

Well, when it was mooted to Hercules that he might complete a few ‘tasks’ I’m sure that he wasn’t thinking that he’d be asked to mop the kitchen or maybe put up some shelves, and although I notice that God called it a day after a week and that included a day off, we are talking supreme being here.

With that in mind I think we can say that we’re not in the world of Greek myth or earth moving. Nope what we have here is the more nerve jangling world of Kafka and I suppose I should have been ready for it after the famous occasion where we needed a form to prove that we didn’t need some other form.

It may be the case that God thought that the ten rules were enough and we should all just get on with it from there but it seems that was a massive disappointment for governments, tax accountants et al.

Firstly, don’t believe the English DVLA when they tell you what the French system will accept. This is a blindingly obvious thing to say but it passed me by.

No the French will not just accept the 5c document.

Yes you can email the export office. Although we were told you could only post or fax. Fax! They obviously missed carrier pigeon and telepathy.

Second, just because you’ve sent the section 11 to the DVLA to say you’ve exported your car don’t sit back and think that the V561 is in the bag – it isn’t. The piece of paper you sent back just tells them you’ve exported your car it doesn’t say ‘and incidentally you can send me the appropriate form back i.e. V561’. To get that you have to send a different form that say (you’ve guessed I’m sure) ‘I’ve exported my car please send me a V561’.

Thirdly, proof of residence. Well if you’re in France the is NOTHING that says this is my address better than an EDF bill. De Gaulle could come back to life and want to insure his car but without the sanction of EDF he would be wasting his time.

Fourth, MOT or equivalent. Just because you’ve just had this done and it lasts for a year in the U.K. And the French equivalent actually lasts for two years, if the former is over six months old you’ll need an in country test.

Fifth, I read up and was cheerfully told I could do it at the Mairie. Nope, so off to the Sous- Prefecture to witness the quiet death of French motorists sitting and waiting – a little like how I imagined dead elves in Tolkien must await the end of the world, take a seat, take the weight off, and wait, and wait. Ah but here’s the rub, they can’t do it either – aha got you! Off to the Prefecture with you, that’s where it’s all happening this was only purgatory.

In actual a fact you can just get a vast dossier together and send it in the post, that’s what we did in the end.

Six, the dossier comes back. You will have calculated the fee incorrectly. If you didn’t –  you, sir, are some kind of genius. Calculating the fee is based on an equation (so far so good), it was probably when I got to the number of cv’s the car has that the mist really descended, that and the fact they added a tax on that was not included in the equation but they would have told us about at the prefecture if we’d have gone.

Seven, resend using their numbers and adding any other information required. Inside leg measurement is a good one to know, that and a stab at Fermat’s last theorem. Say a little prayer. A long one is better.

Eight, await cheery postman with your recorded delivery letter.

Nine, restart your car insurance negotiations. Remember you only have six months before they unilaterally decide everybody else has had time enough to get through, so crack on.

However, no one died. I got fed up and a lot older, summer turned to winter which turned to a wet and windy spring, but could it be done quicker?

Undoubtedly.

Buy a French car in the first place.
Get somebody else to deal with the whole thing and go on a cruise.
Be ‘friends’ with the right people. Although the costs of this approach could be variable.
Don’t bother with a car. This isn’t really an option in rural France, and you’ll need a trailer as well so get that sorted pronto.
So, labyrinthine is probably the best description. Any self respecting chess grandmaster will have no issues and as for the rest of us remember O’Shaunessy’s second and third law:

• The power required by the tractor is proportional to the depth of mud.
• All forms require a good deal of thinking about before you give them to somebody else.

I said to O’Shaunessy the other day ‘ there’s a wild life you’ve got there O’Shaunessy’ he nodded and sat back with the pint, ‘Oui, mais les bougres vont manger les pommes de terre.

I nodded, O’Shaunessy is known hereabouts for the sage comment.

‘Aye, and the late nights can be a curse’ I said.

Bird watching is a really great past time. Watching them flitting this way and that, hanging upside down from a bag of nuts carefully suspended from the wisteria or standing still in the garden, St Francis like as some bird of prey hovers over you. We’ve become addicts, with the nest boxes of wood and ceramic, the nuts and the bird bath. Bits of grain stuck together with fat and hanging by ropes.

We especially like to sit in the kitchen with a huge bird identification book and watch and what a good thing we have, because it’s only by doing so that we’ve discovered at least two totally new species, just here in the garden.
The first is a grey job with some brown on it. Habit: picking up broken nuts from the floor and lots of skipping around. Song: Churry churry cheep cheep. I’ve christened it: Cinereo avis Clarkii after the half of the family.
As for the other, it’s a soaring bird of prey with some white on the tail of a brownish body, again nothing in the book so must be really rare, probably only around our garden. How we’re not inundated by twitchers I can’t imagine, anyway I’ve gone for the noble name:Utentes avis, quod sit brunneo.
So I ask you why all the dashing around over different continents and through jungles laden with big spiders and wolves and large toothed badgers when you can sit down with a nice cuppa and slice of toast and they all just rock up. Easy really.
We’ve not been to The Oasis yet. We’ve heard it, or at least we think we have. The sounds drift over on a summers evening mingling with the gentle chug of tractor on clay and we’ve been tempted to venture out but we’ve stuck with the shimmy around the kitchen and a glass of mothers ruin instead. Still it’s nice to nearly hear some of the older classics: The Byrds, Mott the hopple, Bernard Michlethwaite and his hot five and such like. Those were the days when we could dance till dawn, ah the memories.

O’Shaunessy usualy leave around eleven and true to form I’m looking at the back of his head now.

The doors open and he’s away, he’s your man that O’Shaunessy.

Choose a colour from grey to that luminous pink that you daren’t admit you really like, choose wheels , choose plastic, choose metal – that unsustainable stuff we’ve been digging up for years and refining with all that energy you suddenly don’t want to pay for, choose gardening, choose tools in a bewildering range for an obscure purpose, choose bees- why wouldn’t you, choose none leaking wellies and a big coat, choose expensive Japanese denim because you can, choose your wheelbarrow.
Here at Le Maison Blanche avec le abre walnut we’ve got three wheelbarrows. 
Mr Metal – this lone wolf is our oldest surviving ‘barra. Gritty he’s à get up and go kinda barra, arthritic – well yes. Rusty and with a dickie wheel he’s game to the last and only today reported in for the move of compost and stone and yesterday manure filled was seen limping around the garden attached to a similarly limping person.
Then there’s the twins, not identical but arriving together to an apartment with no garden these were particularly useful.
These two, purple and yellow one two wheeled the other a single. They’re more your pop wheelbarrow. The young upstarts to the cockney geezer. Plastic jobs these two and mine is already looking like the awkward one, dubious axel, burnt lip, cracked bottom.

I don’t know the collective noun for wheelbarrows or even if ones been invented, perhaps a ‘weeding’ will do it. 
I’m sure you are old good gardeners out their and put your tools away everyday after cleaning them off under at tap and oiling any wooden handles against splitting and early arthritis but I’m afraid we’re abit shoddy here at Le Maison Blanche avec le abre walnut. Whisper it amongst your friends but ours stay out all night. Not only that but left where we did our last jobs , abandoned! 

We did wonder whether it might be like toy story out in the garden on a night? The moment our backs are turned the various tools are having a party and reviewing our general poor behaviour vis à vis the correct storage of equipment. 
But that’s just the gin talking. 

Chin,chin.🍸

I wonder whether Burt Lancaster, as the waves lapped over his feet and with Deborah Kerry’s lips clamped to his mouth, felt just a trifle cold? 

I know that it sounds improbable, but as you get older even the most enticing scenarios can be burst in upon by the natural elements. It’s to be sure that he felt wet – from the waves! Blimey you can’t say anything?

If you could get a real close up could you see goosebumps? And a second after the take, was Kerr spitting out salt water and running for a towel and a hot cup of tea – bet she was. 
It’s easy to imagine that living in the south of France that you spend all day, every day, sipping cocktails by the azure pool as the sun toasts you to a lovely mahogany colour suitable for the occasional rub over with pledge polish. It’s true that for a good few months of the year I do have the distinct smell of lavender about me, but today listeners we are talking ‘life not film’, as Deborah said as she took up her Bovril.
Welcome to Dr Prosaic’s book of compost.
As a family we have moved over to the Dowding method. This does not involve large scale bombing of the garden from twenty thousand feet but the building up of several inches of compost over the current ground surface. I’m not sure which method is easier – the first could be messy and to be sure could even spread the weeds around, on the other hand it would complete the remodelling of the field more quickly. Obviously I jest, it’s the more smelly second method but at least it has the advantage of no digging ( so does the first – you cry) and it’s a little more socially reasponsible. 

So that’s Charles not the Air chielf of bomber command to which we are referring.
But we’ll still be having the Bovril, after all eternity is along time and the sea even with Burt Lancaster in it is chilly! 

We have been desperate for poo.   Not desperate for a poo.   Desperate for horse poo, well rotted preferably.  We paid 80 euros for 10 hefty bags of well rotted stuff but it is expensive and we need about 100 times that much if we are to cover what needs covering in 4 inches of poo/compost (see earlier) which, as disciples of Charles Dowding and his ‘no dig’ method, is what we are aiming to do.

In a fit of genius (sorry to sound immodest but it was pretty clever of me) I put a post on a Facebook group for second hand stuff in Aquitaine, asking if there was anyone nearby who had horse manure.   Normally I bloody hate Facebook, and that Aquitaine group is nearly (but not quite) as annoying as the ‘gardening in France’ group which mostly consists of people asking unutterably gormless questions (“Is it time to plant my hollyhock seeds?”)  – have they never read a book or used google, these people?  Aaaaaanyway.  My enquiry on Facebook led to three or four people pretty local to us all popping up and saying they had plenty.   The closest was about 20 minutes away so we arranged to go see him today.

The instructions were to follow a certain road to the end.  We found the road and went nearly to the end of it but bottled out first time with all the ‘beware of the dog’ signs and no indication of human habitation.   We turned around and had another go and ended up in the same place, so ‘gulp’ got out of the car and (hoping not to get bitten by a mad dog) went in search of the proprieter.   Who soon appeared and was a very nice man.  Turns out he takes traumatized or difficult former racehorses and rehabilitates them – wonderful thing to do.    Anyway he led us to the pile of horseshit, gave us a fork and left us to it.

Hard work forking it into a trailer, then hard work the other end forking it into barrows and trailing round the garden mulching the beds and plants, but on we go.  Knackered.  But happy as pigs in shit.