Establishing the water feature

After several weeks the pond is now starting to look established. It was difficult to find pond plants but eventually found some suitable ones, and after several more trips I found two suitable water lilies. Maybe it was the wrong season to buy pond plants, but the choice was limited.

Anyway, the plants and water lilies seem to be doing well and I have had several waterlily flowers already. One is a lovely pink colour and the other a peach and cream colour.
A couple of weeks after filling the pond with water, we were invaded by mosquito larvae. We tried fishing them out but they were quicker than us. As the area is to be used for al fresco eating this was not good. After searching for solutions (non-chemical) we decided to try guppies. They have been a great success and all the larvae disappeared virtually over night - well - after a couple of days anyway. They also add an extra interest factor and seem to be thriving.

Apart from the hibiscus syringea, the rest of the garden has gone into its summer resting stage with not much happening at the moment.
I've created some cards using my waterlily photographs:
  

DIY Stone wall

 

This was one of those rare times when a DIY project exceeded expectation; I almost can't believe I did this.

We wanted a water feature in an area between the house and the back wall and I really wanted to try my hand at creating a stone wall. We saw the stone blocks at a local specialist outlet and they told me the basic construction. The pond and surrounding beds were built with 200x200x500 aggro blocks and then covered with the stone. The stones are roughly 200x200x50 and we bought four corner pieces. The coping tiles were 400x400x20 marble (complete with beautiful fossil shells showing) the total cost was Euros1200.

I was very apprehensive when I got the stone home as the scale of the stones for these small walls seemed out of proportion and the variation in thickness seemed a lot bigger than when we were at the suppliers. The way I got around this was to use single stones on the bottom row and broken stones up the wall. On a bigger wall this would probably not be needed. I found it best to work on one row at a time and let the cement set for 24hrs. At first I wasted too much time trying to get things to fit together, in reality if you get a reasonable fit the gaps can easily be filled in with stone chips and you tend to find the stone shapes dictate the final pattern. That is not to say it is easy and there were times when trying to find the 'right' piece can seem endless but it was great fun.

This was the final product:

And these were some of the stages:

It's Hot in July and the Lavender is in full bloom

We all know that the south of France is hot in July, but in our little corner of the Cote d'Azur it is usually bearable and not as bad as some areas - the next department to us, the Var, is usually 5 degC hotter than here. Even so, it has been over between 30 - 35 degC for nearly two weeks. It's impossible to do much in this heat, but this gives me the ideal opportunity to enjoy the French summer pastime of 'Fariente' which means lazying about and to practice my painting.

I spend most of the day surveying the garden from the balcony and enjoying the result of all the effort earlier in the year. The agapanthus and lavender are in full bloom, so there is a lot of blue in the garden which gives a lovely cooling effect. Usually the garden looks dry in July but we had a lot of rain in May and June which set the garden up for the summer.
Here are a couple of photos to show how abundant the garden is at the moment

Last year the hot weather inspired this painting which is available as a print from Zazzle and as a card from Greeting Card Universe. Called Fariente it evokes the lazying about dream.

Fariente - 'lazying about' Poster by Marionsart
View other Painting Posters

The original is in pastel and the measures 40x50 cm and can be seen on my website. Art by Marion
I also like these Lavender cards that are available on Greeting Card Universe and Zazzle


Lavender Haze Blank Art Card by MarionsCards
See other Lavendar Cards