My Not so Secret Garden

And here we are, another sketchbook page finished …. My not so secret garden!

Because this is my first year in this garden, it’s turning up some surprises. Some beautiful Iris popped up, I've had a couple of very amorous toads skulking around and much to my delight, I discovered I had peonies in one of the plant beds, unfortunately although they had loads of buds they decided to blossom when I was away on holiday and when I came home all that remained to be seen were the dead heads, great! 

We are waiting with bated breath to see our yucca plant blossom, it seems to grow 15cms every day and has sprouted blossoms but the buds remain frustratingly tight. On the left you can see naughty Mrs Poo the cat peeping over our stone steps, we have strawberries and raspberries in the garden and Mrs Poo had got into the habit of pooping in the strawberry bed! Shoo Mrs Poo! We like cats very much but cat poo naa not so much. We thought she might take the opportunity to fertilise our berries while we were away but no, Mrs Poo had been a good girl. 

There is a water feature in the garden too, local stone with water splashing gently down it, I'm glad it’s not too splashy because I'd probably spend most of the time running to the loo (ah, the perils of old age). 

What’s been really special is we have our own vine, which my husband has been taking intense care of and it is growing like a triffid! There are already bunches of grapes hanging off it and as it’s been fertilised with chicken poo (no chemicals here!) I think we might call our first home made wine ''chateau poulette merde'', everything sounds better in French, don’t you think? And we haven’t forgotten the bees, I popped in a special meadow seed mixture just for them, and they’re loving it!