Snow peas

This is the second harvest of snow peas from our plants out in the garden this season. I didn't think to take a photo of the raw peas; only after I steamed them did it occur to me. We made a shrimp and snow pea stir-fry with, as you can see, baby corn for lunch on Thursday. It was a great success.

Snow peas are called "pois gourmands" in French.

There are still a lot of small pea pods and blossoms on those plants, so we're looking forward to more good stir-fries in the coming weeks. The rest of the garden is doing well so far. I can see the tomatoes growing every day, and the yellow flat beans are going to start climbing their trellis any day now.

Barnum

This weekend is yet another holiday weekend. Le lundi de pentecôte (Pentecost Monday) is a day off in France. Our neighbors across the road are planning a big party for the weekend. We have been warned (and invited). There will be overnight guests and campers (RVs) over there.

The barnum is set up in our neighbors' back yard.

They spent all of last weekend working in the yard, getting ready. And they put up this party tent called un barnum in French. As in Barnum & Bailey. The circus. As I mentioned, we're invited on Sunday because B. and M. will be there. We've known them since they so warmly welcomed us to the neighborhood sixteen years ago. They are the owners of the house but, because of their advancing age, they have stopped coming down regularly and have essentially given the place to their oldest daughter. She and her husband are now the ones mowing and trimming and making improvements. The house is a vacation home and not occupied year-round.

Wednesday's rain started collecting on the roof of the tent, making it sag. So Ken and I went over a couple of times to dump the water off by pushing up from the inside. We're such good neighbors.

Rainy day

Well, the predicted thunderstorms with possible hail did not materialize on Tuesday evening. Thankfully. We had a short rain squall during the night that got me up to close a couple of windows. This morning it's raining lightly, and I see that the forecast rain totals for the day have been significantly reduced.

The clary sage around the well is blooming now. There's also some variety of iris that just grows there (we didn't plant it).

We're still waiting for the contractors to start work on the upstairs bathroom. They said début juin (the beginning of June). That's now, but we haven't heard anything. I'm sure things will get going all of a sudden and I'll say "what was I worried about?"

Today's garden

This year's vegetable garden is now officially "in." I'm hopeful that the little seedlings will survive the deluge we're expecting this week. An unusually large amount of rain is predicted for Wednesday. It's always something.

The one big garden plot is a lot easier for Ken to till up than the four smaller squares. And the plants are spaced farther apart now.

The view is from almost the same angle as yesterday's photo from 2004. The difference is that I was standing up on a ladder for the 2004 shot. This one is taken from the ground. And the current photo is about six weeks earlier in the year than the older one. There are no weeds, yet. Oh, they will come.

I harvested our first batch of snow peas over the weekend. We ate a beef with snow pea stir-fry for lunch on Sunday. Delicious! I'll be picking some more in a day or two, after the rains. The yellow flat beans have sprouted and will soon be climbing up the fence (in the back on the right in the photo).

I like the garden at this stage. It's neat, orderly, and weed-free. That will all change and, if we're lucky, we'll be harvesting tasty toms and more later this summer.

Garden flashback

Here's a photo from the summer of 2004, the year we planted our first vegetable garden here in France. We had been in the house for a year and wanted to have our very own jardin potager (kitchen garden). I saw a cool-looking garden at the Château de Fougères that was made up of four square plots, so we copied the layout in our garden.

Our first kitchen garden in France, July 2004. Fifteen years ago!

Our first year was pretty successful, although it does look like a bit of a jumble. I planted many things way too close together. I watered with a sprinkler and grew almost as many weeds as vegetables. We had good eggplant and bell peppers, two things that have not worked well in the years since. One year I even had a good crop of sweet corn, but have not had success with that since.

At any rate, the four squares eventually merged into one giant square. Mowing the grass in those in-between strips became difficult as each square plot sought its own level. Many things in the yard and garden have changed since this first attempt. I think that in those first few years, we bought established seedlings at the markets (that might explain why the plants did so well, lots of fertilizer to get them started). Now I plant my own seeds and use our home-made compost. It's great to have the photos to look back on.

Summer flowers

The wildflowers I'm seeing out on my walks with Tasha are transitioning from springtime flowers to summertime flowers. The tall grasses are being cut here and there, but patches remain and so do many of the flowers.

I don't know what it's called, but I think it's a member of the umbellifer family, like wild carrot.

We're expecting rain over the next few days, so today is a day to get some more garden work done. I have kale and pepper seedlings to put out and I want to spray the tomatoes with a mold preventative before it gets wet out there. I got a bunch of little basil seedlings at the market on Saturday and I want to get them transplanted into pots for the deck.

It's about thyme

One of the thyme plants in the garden is blooming. It's a standard thyme variety. The other two are lemon thyme and they are not flowering yet.

Tiny thyme blossoms.

The weather is nice. We're wearing shorts for the first time this year. The grass is all cut again. It grows very fast in the spring when it's wet and starting to warm up. Once the hotter, dryer days of summer come, the grass doesn't need to be cut so often.

I'm heading into town to the market this morning for strawberries. I'll also be looking for something tasty to grill for lunch. I love barbecue weather! This is a four-day weekend for a lot of French people. Thursday was a holiday (Ascension) and many people took Friday off, too. Next weekend will be a three-day weekend as Pentecost Monday is another national holiday. The stores and markets, not to mention the roads, are starting to feel crowded.