Spring Is In The Air

After a week away from the office spent in L’Herault (Languedoc), with my two girls, it was lovely to come back to a sun drenched Charente on Saturday afternoon. I am certainly do not have ‘Green Fingers’, in fact far from it, but on Sunday I was out treating the lawn to its first cut of 2014. There had been a light frost overnight, but by 10h00 we were spoilt with the warmth of the sun. The Charente seemed to be no more than a week behind L’Herault in finding Spring and with the sun on my back I was inspired to start pruning the budding apple trees (pommiers) and trimming the vines (vignes) back hard. This severe type of trimming (probably a technical word for it) had been done in the hills around Montpellier, so only fair to do so in Charente.

In my garden the daffodils, hyacinths and other bulbs (can’t remember what the others were to be honest as I had bought a value pack of bulbs and planted them all last year. Had I mentioned that I was not Green Fingered?) However, I am not sure if now is the time to tend the garden in the fashion I had done so  this weekend, but one piece of advice I can give is not to wear open ‘Crocs’ sandals when pruning the apple trees!!!! I lost count of the amount of times I had the pleasure of last year’s rotten apples squidging under my socks!

The week is due to become even milder with temperatures for this weekend rising to a warm and sunny 17°C. Let’s hope that Spring is here to stay and that my ‘vignes’ and ‘pommiers’ survive my Spring-Induced attack.