Planting Phormium with little green helper

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Got up at 6am, as it is still cool, to plant half a dozen plants which i bought at our GC yesterday

somebody decided it was just the job to hide a bright green body in, so i decided to leave him where he was and put the plant in a bucket of water for a while before planting, but after half an hour he was still there

i dug a hole, that took me a long time as the soil is really solid and i had to keep filling the hole with water, then mix the clay with some compost and lots of little pebbles, they dont sell grit here, and mix it, clay was wet so a bit of a job

then decision to leave or remove our little frog, decided to leave him, planted up.
and after i did that, he was still there!!
she must like to feel the earth move.. ;~)))

while i was doing this i heard my neighbour , about half a km away, calling his cows, it is a really evocative sound, it goes something like ‘vachevachevachevaaaaaeech’ , working up the speed at the end and his cows and their calves all come trooping towards him to be takenanother nice bit of his fields or to the barn.
when the farmers advertize the veal here they say the calves are ‘’élevés sous la mère’‘, which is ’’reared under the mother’’ ….. lovely
i tried to take a pic of his ‘blond aquitanes’ ladies but it was too far.

i also planted some roman dbl white chamomile – no name again! – some savory and 2 lavender dentata, they go on flowering fron an early start in may/june till the first frosts and smell even better than any of the others, however i lost 29 of my 32 dentatas last winter so will now only use my own seed and keep fingers crossed.
the herbgarden is coming on well, about 20 plants so far and still looking fairly empty.
decided to wait with the big mulch as we are supposed to get rain tomorow, it usually evaporates before it gets to us though!

a shot of my little lavender patch with a cloud of insects in and above it

just noticing the hollyhock on the last pic, in the uk all my hollies suffered from rust without fail, but none of them here do, is it damp related perhaps?

and after that it was time for my breakfast as it was getting too scorching to be out there. gardening over till tonight when it is watering day today.

• 3 Jul, 2012
• 10 likes

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