It's definitely springtime

It's April 11 (Happy Birthday, Sue!) and the weather has been spring-like for several days now. In fact, in the afternoon it feels like summer. The air is still cool — as they say in French, le fond de l'air est frais — but if you get out in the sun, or if you exercise just a little, you'd think it was June or July.

Flowering prunus tree and the garden shed

We were so lucky when we found this place in 2002. We can't take any credit for landscaping — it was all here before we arrived. We just try to keep it cleaned up.

Springtime flowers

Just keeping it cleaned up — raked, trimmed, and mowed — is plenty of work. Last weekend, Walt mowed the grass for the first time this year.

Early morning sunlight and shadow

Right now I need to go out and do some digging to prepare a new bed for flowers. It's hard work but it will be worth it when the flowers bloom in a few weeks.

Plum trees in flower out by the back gate

The tree with pink flowers is strictly ornamental, but the ones with white flowers actually produce plums. The wasps and birds get most of them, but we enjoy the flowering stage this time of year. Following are a couple of closeups of the white flowers.

April 8, 2007, at La Renaudière

Our biggest project in the garden by far has been the vegetable plots. They didn't exist before we tilled them up. Now is the time of year when the ground needs to be worked again. The rototiller makes that possible. I tilled the first of three plots yesterday (the fourth one is a year-round herb garden).

One plot down and two to go — thanks to the rototiller

Last fall we harvested the last of the vegetable crops at the end of September and then flew off to the U.S. for a month of traveling around and visiting family and friends. When we got back home in November, the weather turned cool and rainy. So the garden plots didn't get tilled, and grass and weeds really took over during our unusually mild winter. Now it's like starting all over again from scratch (appropriate expression...). Never again will I let autumn pass and winter arrive without working the soil out there.