Wednesday 17 February 2016

Different Covers

A hoary frost covers the potager this morning. A thick, puffy duvet covers me. The frost is gone in about an hour while the duvet remains for longer. My faire grasse matinée (making the morning fat = oversleeping) can be blamed on my companion, a large, musty, second-hand book on French wine. I kept napping between chapters. The early riser chez nous, The Calm One, told me that he brought in some plants to be on the safe side. I carry the lettuce/herb seedlings mini-greenhouse back out checking that its cover is secure.

In the foreground, perennial candytuft already has flower buds

The bird baths are covered with a thin film of ice which gets broken with my trusty mallet.

Gregarious starlings adore these baths almost as much as I adore watching them cavort

The cover of oak-leaf mulch on the to-be-pea-bed is brushed away a bit to see if the prepared soil is too soggy for planting. 

Soil sticking to spade signals a no-go

Hopefully the sky will stay mostly cloudless long enough to allow the sun to do its thing.


Sweet violets, daffodils, and Italian arums cover a shaded, raised bed.

I let the moss have its way with the cement retaining wall

Ensuring our plates are covered with warm food, I make grilled cheese.

Edam is a staple chez nous

A stack of them, in fact.


Later on, apple crumble/crisp provides an excuse to use the oven on a nippy day.


We didn't want our plates to be cold so we kept covering them with apple crumble.


Fur covers Dirac the Young Cat which of course doesn't stop his burrowing under duvets especially when they are covering people.

Celadon eyes with matching duvet

À la prochaine!