This weekend is unusual in that whereas here in France tomorrow is a working day, in the UK and US it isn’t. It never ceases to amuse me that, when Those in Charge aren’t at their desks, nothing bad happens on the econo-financial front. You’d have thought someone would’ve made the link by now, but obviously not. Anyway, we’ve had a lovely day here….a rare occurrence this Spring, which has been by far the most wet and cold that South West France has experienced in many a decade. I could get started on the complete MSM silence about what this is bound to mean for the European food supply-chain, but we’d be here all night. So instead I thought a gentle garden-amble might be more appropriate for a Sunday evening.

Starting with the more wild adventurers out there, I’ve always had a bit of a thing for periwinkles. People keep telling me to control them – that one day I will have to take napalm to the takeover and so forth – but they do cover many vices while having infinite virtues. This shot is from the rockery I built next to the cellar. It was a delicate rockery, but now it’s the periwinkle rockery. It is a lot less work than it was.

 

 

 

The hedges here are riddled with wild roses, but these too are pretty enough to make cutting them back a crime….until they’ve finished flowering. As they flower from April to August, here we have yet another excuse for me to do little or nothing. If you’re detecting a trend in all this, well done.

 

 

Nigella – or Love in the Mist – has a shade of blue flower so soft and yet glaring at the same time, it is probably nature’s best expression of primary pastel. It’s a weed allegedly, but as the best definition of a weed is “something that hogs the space to which others are also entitled”, I’m not sure I agree with the verdict. Nigella will grow in places other flowers cannot reach: so I think of it as more explorer than weed. Even better, all you need to do is collect the seed pods, chuck them everywhere in October, and leave nature to do the rest. There’s that trend again. By now, you must have me down as The Idle Gardener – and if so, you’re right on the money.

 

 

 

Until I spent time down here where the light rewards reds and yellows, I always thought of red roses as a bit naff. But thread them in among a tree with pink threads, and they come into their own.

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is also an orange-to-yellow rose called Courtyard which – when set against the natural rock of Lot et Garonne – shines out in a way it never could in northern Europe.

 

I leave you tonight with the news that Deutsche Bank’s derivative debt is greater than the global economy. That is just the one bank with $72 trillion in derivative exposure. The entire global economy is only $66 trillion GDP. But none of that will stop things from growing. Hurrah.