French Bliss

The old watermill in Vernon, Normandy

is what I enjoyed earlier this month when I went for a short holiday to Normandy, France. It's a 6 hours drive from where I live so not too bad. My main reason for going was, of course, to experience Monet's garden in May and it did not disappoint as you can gather from my previous post.
The weather was lovely so that made the holiday even more enjoyable. Monet's garden was not the only garden I saw when I was there. Just a few hundred meters from Monet's garden is the American Art Museum that comes with its own lovely garden and, you haven't heard the best bit yet, it's free!
The road from the American Art Museum to Monet's garden flanked with zillions of Irises
The garden of the American Art Museum
Hmmmm, what does this Grand Allee remind me of? Not the foggiest, you?
It is not the biggest of gardens but you can spend a very pleasant half hour there before or after you've visited Monet's garden. And the museum itself is worth a visit too. I went to see the exposition Portrait of a Lady. and very pretty Ladies they all were too.
Before I went to Monet's garden I had a nice cup of coffee and a scrumptious fruit tart at the Terra Cafe of the Museum. After my visit to Monet I returned to the Terra Cafe to have an excellent lunch outside on the terrace underneath a canopy of tree branches, overlooking the garden. Simply Bliss!
Close to Giverny you find the small town of Vernon with some lovely architecture but appallingly bad food. I had the worst dinner ever there although the wine was excellent. Yes, the French do bad food too. Yuck!
Some beautiful old houses dating back to the Middle Ages, Vernon
Ancient Donjon, Vernon
Gothic church with the gargoyles to prove it

All that sightseeing makes a person hungry so off we went to a lovely old watermill, Le Moulin de Fourges, to have dinner.
We'd booked a table at 8 and when we arrived it was still warm enough to have our aperitifs outside in the garden.
Cheers!

Later on, when it got a bit nippy, we went inside to have our dinner.
One of the charms of dining in an old building is its lovely atmosphere; it was simply riddled with old beams, quaint little windows and whathaveyou.
There also was a lovely view of the surrounding countryside. But enough of quaint sloping floors, adorable little mullioned windows and forehead bumping low beams, let us progress to the more important stuff : the food!
Starter
Main course
Just deserts ;-)
Feast your eyes on this, gentle reader. What a pity that it can only be a feast for your eyes.With it I drank a half bottle of an amusing red wine, tres amusant in fact, not to mention tasty.

I was in Normandy for only a few days but I made the most of it. Even the drive to and from Normandy was very pleasant as we drove through gently rolling hills and these gorgeous fields of golden Bliss under a deep blue sky. You could smell the flowers long before you could see them, a kind of warm wild honey, very enjoyable.
copyright 2008 Y.E.W. Heuzen

The gardener does not love to talk (...)
And never seems to want to play, (...)
O how much wiser would you be
To play at Indian wars with me!
Robert Louis Stevenson, A Child's Garden of Verses

Monet's May Garden

Earlier this month I was able to fulfill a dream of mine because I went to see Claude Monet's garden in Normandy, France, in Spring. I've been there twice before, both times in Autumn. Monet's garden looked great then too, it looks great most of the year no surprises there, but I did so want to see it in Spring and now I have. Colour me a happy gardener, a very happy gardener. :-D Without much further ado here are some of my impressions of this world famous impressionist's garden to feast your eyes on!
Monet's paintings were all about colour and so is his garden. It's a riot of colour for most of the year and 10 gardeners are working their socks off to keep it that way. A lot of the planting is not permanent but consists of bedding plants. In May that's wallflowers, pansies, aubretia, tulips, irises, forget-me-nots etc.

Monet's flower garden is mainly made of flowerbeds, zillions of flowerbeds flanking miles of paths or so it certainly feels and although there are a lot of bedding plants, you can find some more permanent planting there too such as roses, peonies, fruit trees, trees etc.
Because Monet is such a world famous painter who was very much inspired by his own garden in Giverny, many people want to see Monet's garden to the tune of half a million visitors per year. Sissinghurst in Kent, England, is also a very famous garden and that feels crowded with 200.000 visitors a year even though it is at least three times the size of Monet's garden.
Everywhere you look your eyes are hit by this very particular shade of green that is called Monet Green. Personally I don't like it all that much as it is a very harsh colour and too much in your face. It is literally everywhere; on chains blocking paths, posts, gates, the house, the arches and metal pergola's, steps, benches etc. The paint has to be manufactured exclusively but I wish they wouldn't bother and simply buy an off the shelf turquoise green paint that's much easier on the eye. I simply love the soft pink they used on the house as it goes so well with the garden and the surrounding countryside but that green, oh that horrid acid green. But enough of that green, let's sooth our eyes with those gorgeous colours the plants provide.
Strangely enough there weren't all that many irises to be found in Monet's garden. Pretty weird as most of France is covered with irises in front gardens, alongside the road, against walls etc. in May as you can see here.
It's not for nothing that another famous painter used them in his paintings.
Dear Vincent was behaving like an ordinary tourist by painting Irises in May and Sunflowers in September, just like you and me taking pics of those flowers. Very cliche! ;-)

Monet's garden is split in two by a road and you can reach the other part by going through a tunnel under that road. By entering the tunnel you make a transition from one world into the next as you leave behind a sunny, hot, vibrantly colourful world ...................
and when you come up you'll find yourself in a garden that is cool, shady, calm and mostly green. Simply wonderful!
The famous waterlily pond where the waterlilies were not in flower yet as it was only early May. The use of colour in the water garden is very restricted; it is mostly provided by the famous waterlilies,
the equally famous Japanese bridge smothered with blue Wistaria and some discreet planting along the edge of the pond.
Or that is how it used to be when I visited Monet's garden 10 years ago. So imagine my shock and horror when I encountered this in the water garden. It looked horribly Disney to me. What happened to understated and tranquil? Where did the juxtaposition between the flower garden and the water garden go?
Apparently they had to use this new planting around the pond to keep that humongous herd of half a million visitors per year from trampling the edges of the pond. Sure, but why choose these garish colours? Why go from this
cool, calm, restful

to this!
garish!

Keep in mind that when you use colour along the water's edge you double the impact as the plants are also reflected in the water. IMO there is no need to use such harsh colours in what used to be such an understated and tranquil garden.
We're back into the flower garden to have a look at Monet's house as that is open to visitors as well. If you ever have the chance to visit Monet's garden don't forget to visit his house as well as it is really worth your while. The use of colour inside the house is just as imaginative as the outside one. You get to see many rooms both upstairs and downstairs. The dining room is particularly colourful in mostly yellow with a touch of black and white, and one of Monet's studios is very impressive with a lot of reproductions of his work hanging there. Just imagine what it must have been like when the real McCoy hang from those walls!
The kitchen with cheerful copper pans
A view from a window
View of the garden from an upstairs window

It was hard work to snap pictures from Monet's garden without zillions of people in them. There were quite a few people about when I was visiting the garden but it wasn't that badly crowded because I knew what would be the best time to see the garden. When I went to the garden there were only 2 or 3 people in front of me in the queue but when I left there were loooooooooooooong rows of people standing in the hot sun waiting for admission.

I hope you enjoyed your visit to Monet's Garden and we'll say goodbye with a pic of one of my favourite flowerbeds.
copyright 2008 Y.E.W. Heuzen

It is not enough that romance lies behind the birth and growth of the landscape and the mantle of plants that clothe it. The happy traveler must seek to convey some of that romance to others who have not had the good fortune to enjoy it and what better means can there be than by making a garden. Frank Kingdom-Ward

Clambering Clematis Batman!

that's what I thought when I entered my conservatory this morning. After a dry spell that lasted for 2 weeks it finally started to rain last night which was great as my garden could do with a bit of rain. So I was a happy bunny with all that rainfall until I spotted this
one soaking wet sofa

and this
a puddle of dirty water on the conservatory floor

caused by this.
a leak in the roof of the conservatory!

Arrrrrggggggg!

OK, this is your chance, dear reader, to commiserate with me, say nice things, do a spot of hand holding and it is also a very opportune moment to pass the tissues, although even 20 boxes of tissues will not get rid of all that wetness in my sofa or that puddle on the floor. We need much more drastic action than that. So out came the mop and to work I went. The floor is dry now, I've put a bucket underneath the leak in the roof as it has started to rain again, phoned a man about the leak and I'm blow drying the sofa with not a lot of success yet as it really is soaking wet.

And all this on the birthday of my lovely Willow, she of the incredibly beautiful eyes.
Willow, 8 years old today!
Willow getting her birthday tummy rub

My beautiful Russian Blue girl is 8 years old today. It's hard to belief as it wasn't all that long ago when she looked like this.
The 3 sisters f.l.t.r. Paloma, Willow and Ravenna
Baby Willow with mama Majalis Yolanda (yes, she was named after me), her 2 sisters and 3 brothers Villa, Vivaldi and Volodja.
Here's another look at Willow's beautiful Mum Nina (Majalis Yolanda).

Happy Birthday Willow!!!

And then I find out that my blog has won another Mousie for Best International Garden Blog of 2008! So let's open a bottle of champagne, get a few other mousies out for the kittycats before they get jealous of my new Mousie and let's party!
Cheers!

A warm thank you to all of you who voted for Bliss for Best International Garden Blog of 2008 and to Colleen who has done such a lot of work organising the Mousie Awards and who gave birth to a bouncing and beautiful baby daughter in her spare time. :-) Can anyone top that? I thought not. ;-)
Vita: We're supposed to get jealous about that? Fat chance!

Yes, yes, yes, I hear your inner gardener complain, that is all very well YE, commisserations, congratulations and other ations but what about them clematises, clematisiseses errrrr youknowwhatsits. Aren't you going to show us any? Well, gentle reader, when have I ever let you down? Feast your eyes on these little beauties.
Showstopper Clematis montana rubra
the same Clematis montana rubra on the other side of the fence my favourite Multi Blue
Multi Blue
The first bloom of Hagley Hybrid, such a lovely pink that almost doesn't fade in the sun
Gipsy Queen in the potager Gipsy Queen
Snow Queen climbing up the pergola
Snow Queen, a white flower with a lilac heart
Another first bloom, this time Rouge Cardinal growing in the strawberry patch in the potager

I'm leaving you with a pic of a different climber, one that I'm very proud of, my lovely white Wistaria blooming for the first time.

Have a great weekend!

Copyright 2008 Y.E.W. Heuzen

Strong plants are less likely to be destroyed - and you only get strong plants by good cultivation and manuring. You must not expect insecticides to make up for deficient cultivation and manuring.
Ministry of Agriculture, Allotment & Garden Guides, April 1945

May Bloom Bliss

It's almost half May and time once again for my contribution to Garden Bloggers Blooms Day. There are so many blooms in my garden at the mo that I've decided to show just a selection of them as showing them all plus making long lists of blooms would take up way too much of my time. Last year writing a post for GBBD took up 4 hours of my time from May until October. That's just too much time to spend writing a blog as I also need time to visit my favourite blogs and, something that is very important and much appreciated by almost all garden bloggers, to leave comments.
Clematis Snow Queen

So what is in bloom at Bliss at the moment ? Well, we have Irises in flower, and Clematis too.
Clematis Multi Blue
Clematis montana rubra

I don't have the names of the Irises as I thought I'd bought one particular Iris but then was surprised to find that so far, none are of the variety I wanted. That can and does happen when you buy plants not in flower.

The garden cottage is looking very pleased with itself now that all those beautiful flowers are in bloom. Such a cheerful sight for sore eyes, don't you think?
New on Bliss is this climber
Wistaria Floribunda Longissima Alba

a lovely white Wistaria. No, not a spelling error, the person this plant was named after was called Dr Caspar Wistar not Wister, hence Wistaria. I bought my Wistaria last year when it was not in flower. Buying plants not in flower can be a bit of a risk as sometimes plants are not labelled correctly (we have all been burned that way, right?) and I could have ended up with a blue Wistaria but, I'm very happy to say, it turned out to be a white one and its scent is heavenly.
Also new this year are these lovely little Anemones; they are white with a pink circle around the heart of the flower. I think they are gorgeous and hopefully there will be more of them next year.
Most of the early spring bulbs are gone now but other bulbs have taken over the flowering baton. Here are some pretty aliums to enjoy. They are in my front garden, together with the last of my tulips Queen of the Night.
It's difficult to do these gorgeous tulips justice as their dark colour does not photograph very well. Let's try again.
Better, but not quite right yet. How about this pic, it's showing a lovely combination of dark burgundy purple Queen of the Night tulip with pink Columbine.
Underneath the tulips the white Geraniums are coming up. It won't be long now before my front garden will change her colourful spring frock into a scrumptious bridal white. The roses are already working hard to turn my front garden into a white, wonderfully scented Bliss.
Madame Alfred Carriere is already in flower, she was the second flowering rose this year, just like last year. The earliest, both this year and lasts, is Rosa Moonlight.
Rosa Moonlight

Moonlight is a very strong rose with loads of beautiful white blooms with a wonderful scent and it flowers for most of the year. Its stems and new leaves are a very pretty burgundy red, the older leaves are dark green and glossy.
Rosa Madame Alfred Carriere

Dear Madame Alfred is not quite white, I've smuggled a bit here, but a lovely pale pink and her scent is pure bliss.

I've planted the roses in my front garden in June of 2006 so they have been here for almost 2 years now. Most of my white roses have a bed of their own and are growing up a rose standard. But what a difference there is between the roses.
Rosa Moonlight is filling up her bed nicely.
Here's Rosa Sombreuil, who is a rather modest rose although her fragrance is not modest at all; it's of the kind you want to bottle and douse yourself with.
Sombreuil
Rosa Blanc Double de Coubert is also of the more modest kind. Its flowers are of the purest white and its scent is a bit like pineapple, very fresh and fruity.
Rosa Blanc Double de Coubert

I have two of those and although they are not real climbers they do very well in the beds they share with white lavender. They haven't reached the top of the standard yet but they will in time.

But what about this one, Rosa Guirlande d'Amour?
This isn't growing, it's exploding all over the place. You can hardly see the bed it is in and it's is covered in buds right now. Can't wait to see this one flowering, it will be a riot!

One of my favourite May flowers is the Elderberry. I love its delicate lacy flowers, both for their beauty and for the delicious things you can do with them. You can fry the flowers in batter, use them in pancakes or make a very tasty and refreshing non-alcoholic champagne from the flowers. Here you can read how to make this delicious champagne. Cheers!
Elderberry blossom

Copyright 2008 Y.E.W. Heuzen

From personal experience I can tell those who look with longing eyes on a neighbour's lovely garden (...) that this is all possible for you (...) with no experience, provided you are willing to become acquainted with the plants through personal contact, the glory of success, the sorrow of failure, a little patience and some work.
Mrs Greenleaf Clark, The Garden Magazine, May 1917

Sowing the Seeds of Love

That's what I've been doing since late January. There are seedlings everywhere at the mo, in my greenhouse
in my conservatory
and already planted out in the veggie garden, growing like no body's business.
Whenever I do a spot of sowing that song by Tears for Fears always pops into my head; Sowing the Seeds of Love. And they are so right, that really is what we are doing.
Just think about it. What's a more loving act than feeding the ones you love? Life is precious and can only be sustained with food. Giving our loved ones good, healthy food keeps them healthy and happy too. I think that is one of the big reasons that growing your own food has made such a comeback. With all the rubbish in the supermarkets that is passed off as food, we feel the strong urge to grow our own to make sure that we keep our friends and families healthy and ourselves as well.
This feeding of our loved ones goes back a looooooooooooooooong way. There was a time when (wo)mankind were hunters and gatherers. Unfortunately the stress in our society has always been placed on the hunters so lets break the mold and focus on the gatherers. That's you and me, girlfriend!
While the menfolk were off hunting bears or boars or something of that ilk, the women went gathering nuts and berries and veggies and anything else edible that they could lay their hot little hands on. Women had to put food on the table and as the men were not always successful in the hunt (sorry, no mammoth steak today) us women had to make sure that there was enough food to feed all the hungry mouths.
This gathering malarkey went on for quite a while ( a couple of thousand years or thereabouts) and must have been rather time consuming as you had to do everything on the hoof. A lot of thinking and planning was involved as well; you had to remember which shrub carried ripe berries at which time, remember at what time of year you could gather nuts and where, know when it's time to score some edible greens etc. It had to be done all on foot while keeping an eye on the kids as well; hey don't pull the tail of that sable tooth tiger, just leave that big kitty alone! Multi-tasking was the name of the game then too for us women..
The women who were best at this sort of thing had the best chance to survive and pass on their gathering and multi-tasking skills to the next generation (selection is the name of that game). Nowadays we women still possess those skills and that's why we are, for instance, so very good at shopping. We know where to find the best bargains, at which time of year (sale!) and we love bringing home all the goodies by the bagful. At least that's my story and I'm sticking to it. ;-)
As I said, all that food gathering was very time consuming and one day a clever woman (it had to be a woman, right?) had this brilliant idea: why don't we grow our own food instead of wandering around hoping to find something to eat? That's how the first gardener was born and as she was a woman she thought not only of her stomach but of her soul/spirit too and she grew all the lovely food and beautiful flowers for the family.
And the women also figured out a way how to prepare all that delicious food once it was harvested and how to preserve it so that there was food in wintertime too.
And we're still doing it today, our methods may have changed a bit but the principle has stayed the same; growing food, preparing it and feeding our loved ones and ourselves with it. Is there anything more satisfying then having & sharing with our loved ones a scrumptious meal prepared with love and homegrown from the seeds of love?
Hot love with Dolly and nasturtiums

Keep on sowing and growing and cooking!

Sowing the seeds of love
The seeds of love
Sowing the seeds
An end to need
And the politics of greed
With love
Tears for Fears

On the right side you'll find a video bar with the song Sowing the Seeds of Love. Don't forget to crank up the volume!

copyright 2008 Y.E.W. Heuzen

First of all in gardening, comes the preparation of the soil. Give the plants the food they need and plenty of water, and the blessed sunlight will do the rest. Helena Rutherford Ely, A Woman's Hardy Garden, 1903

To Comment Or Not To Comment

That is the question. Or is it? Last week my garden friend Birgit (Day After Day, That's Life) wrote a post about commenting or not commenting as one of her blogging friends had switched off the comment section of her blog and had informed everybody of her not commenting on other blogs from now on. Her reason was that commenting simply took up too much of her time.
Sister Dolly, do you see any comments coming?

For me no comment is not an option. ;-) Receiving comments on my blog is one of the fun things of blogging for me. I like getting feedback and would miss it very much if I would not get any comments on my posts anymore. I just love it when people write that my blog has inspired them to take up gardening or when they comment that they were feeling down and that my blog made them laugh and feel much better. Some comments make me laugh, others are food for thought or thoughts about food. :-D Would blogging not be much less fun without the interaction, without the questions, compliments, jokes, encouragements, sharing of information etc.?
Receiving a comment is like receiving a little present from a friend

And visiting someone else's blog and not leaving a comment is no option for me either. What would be the point? Just read the blog and leave? Would that not reduce blogging to mere reading? If I just want to read stuff I can pick up a book, a newspaper or a magazine. I have come across blogs from time to time that don't have a comment section and for me those blogs are as dead as the proverbial Dodo. Personally I like responding to what other people posted about even if it does take up much of my time.

Commenting is to reach out and touch

Through blogging and commenting we bloggers get to know each other, share our knowledge, have fun and let others know that their blog is appreciated and well liked. And sometimes we can even reach out and touch. In small ways that's true, but nevertheless we do influence each other. It's thanks to my friends Kylee (Our Little Acre) and Robin (Robin's Nesting Place) that this year I've sown Zinnias, flowers that I've never tried before. My Swedish friend Karin (Ute och Inne) shared a recipe for asparagus that I've tried out and it was scrumptious, thanks Karin! And recently I shared a simple recipe for a radish sandwich which Annie (The Transplantable Rose) tried out and liked very much. Annie in her turn inspired others to give this sandwich a try too, at least that's what I've read in the comments on her blog.

It's through blogging and commenting that we garden bloggers have formed a community. Recently that led to Spring Fling in Austin where so many garden bloggers finally had the chance to meet each other and share the fun that is gardening.
Fun in the sun, baby August playing with his Mom Surprise's tail

But enough about my POV how about you, dear reader, what do you think about commenting or not commenting? Do you like receiving comments? Does commenting take up too much of your time or not? Would you rather not comment on other people's blogs? Do you feel pressured to comment and feel stressed out because of it? Any other views you'd like to share on comments? One enquiring mind likes to know!

Before I forget, I've made poll about commenting and you can cast your vote if you like. The poll will be open until 12 May.

copyright 2008 Y.E.W. Heuzen

'But I must gather knots of flowers,
And buds and garlands gay,
For I'm to be Queen o' the May, mother,
I'm to be Queen o' the May.'
Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Pottering in the Potager

One of my favourite places to be is my potager. I love pottering around there all day long. Lately we've been having quite a few sunny days and I've made the most of them. In the Netherlands we almost never know what the weather will be like the next hour, let alone the next day. So when the sun is out, I'm out too.
Because of all that sunshine and temperatures around 20 C everything is growing like mad in the kitchen garden, not only the veggies, fruits and flowers but also the weeds. There is a lot to do in the potager in April. I've planted out leeks, onions and broccoli and have done a lot of weeding.
The lettuce I'd sown in a cold frame last February is ready to be picked. It's a pick and come again variety. I prefer those to lettuces that form heads.
I've been harvesting radishes for weeks now and today I harvested another bunch. They taste much better than shop bought ones, the latter have hardly any taste at all.
The potager is looking better day by day.
Last year I'd sown some forget-me-nots and this year they have come up all over my kitchen garden. It's such a lovely sight to see those gorgeous blue and pink flowers. BTW Barbara, I've found 1 white forget-me-not, so they have self seeded too, only 1 seedling, but hey, it's a start.
The primulas are flowering their little hearts out, bless,
and so is my pretty yellow Columbine. I'm going to save her seeds so I will have more plants next year for my yellow border to be.
The lovely sunny weather has it drawbacks too, the earth was so dry and we were scraping the barrel, the water barrel that is, as you can see here.
But last Sunday evening it started to rain, it rained some more yesterday and we had some showers today as well so the barrels are now nicely filled up again. I've been planting out so many seedlings in the potager and as they need a bit of pampering their first week or two out in the garden, I used quite a lot of rainwater to give them a good soak when they needed it.
My raspberry is growing very fast and is already forming buds. It won't be long now before it starts to flower. I planted it last year and had a very modest crop of raspberries then but the way things are looking now Pippa (my fruit loving Russian Blue cat)
Pretty Pippa foto Scheffer

and I will be enjoying lots of raspberries this year. Something we both look forward too.
There will also be white currants, pears, grapes and apples later this year. And we seem to be in berry heaven here at Bliss with all the gooseberries, strawberries, black berries, elder berries and blue berries that will be ready for picking in the not too distant future. Simply wonderful as I'm so keen on fruit, just like Pippa.
Before you start thinking that I have an humongous kitchen garden; I have not. Mine is about 90 square meters, is all! Then how do I manage to grow so many different kinds of fruits? It's really simple, most of my berries are grown on standards and take a good hard look at my giant apple tree here.
It's called a Ballerina tree; it's an apple tree with very short branches, and it grows only to 2.5 meters high. I have two of those and hope to train them into an arch once they are tall enough to graft them together. It's amazing the amount of apples you can get from such tiny trees like these. They don't take up much space; you can even grow them in a pot on a balcony. So even if you only have a very small space for gardening, that is no excuse for not having your own gardengrown apples. Go on, give it a try!
copyright 2008 Y.E.W. Heuzen

What plant we in this apple-tree?
A world of blossoms for the bee,
Flowers for the sick girl's silent room,
For the glad infant sprigs of bloom,
We plant with the apple-tree.
William Cullen Bryant, 'The Planting of the Apple-Tree'