The Garden Journal

4th of December 2023: First Entry. Ever.

So first things first : the beginning of all this has all three of us (P, le Baby and le me) in a little apartment in Bordeaux, France very aware on one hand that our present accommodations can only be temporary and on the other that not been millionnaires meant the town house dream wasn’t going to take place in Bordeaux.

So in the summer of 2022, we decided we were going to make a radical change and rationally find ourselves a place to build our dream life in.

These were our prerequisites :

• a town big enough to provide strong infrastructures, good schools, everything available on foot with a car that leaves the garage on very rare occasions
• a town small enough to be affordable in terms of real estate
• and we wanted to move further up north from where we were : not a big fan of heat here, I’m one of those people who get incapacitated when the thermometer goes above 28 degrees C° – the blistering 40°C of the Bordeaux summers very nearly ended me – she said dramatically.

So our process was the following : we listed all the big towns of the north west of France and we made The Spreadsheet of all Spreadsheets listing stuff like :

• connectivity (railroads mostly)
• weather conditions
• political inclination of local elected officials
• price of real estate
• density of population
• cultural offer

We narrowed down our search to 4 towns that we then went on to visit during that summer and came up with a winner.

And that is how we landed in February 2023 in LE MANS, France.

Now, ask any French person, Le Mans is not the sexiest of places but it turns out it’s perfect for us.

So here we are, fleshly arrived in our new place, where we know no one. I’ve gone from working full time to being a stay at home Mum to a toddler. If you have or have had – a toddler, you know what that can entail. Two months in and I needed something, anything. I guess going house hunting was as good a project as any to keep me from completly loosing my shit – transparency here will be absolute or not at all. We told ourselves the probability of finding OUR house straight away was very slight… Of course, in hindsight, I think that was underestimating how much we wanted to find it, how ready we were to find it and how close to loosing my shit I actually was. A lethal combination…

23 of September 2023 : status is Sighed, Sealed and Delivered.

We are now the proud and lucky owners of a classic town house, a mancelle but with a twist : Jeannine, the previous owner was, from what I gather, a true original and she gave the house a rather futuristic and radical makeover in the early 1990’s… The house itself will be renovated during the course of 2024 (fingers crossed) and will be the object of a before/after piece.

We will be, in the mean time, focusing on The Garden.

The Dream has always been a rather simple and conventional one : in my minds eye, the movie of my life was set in a town house filled with joy, laughter, love, creativity and flowers. And because I’m one of the (very) lucky ones, I get to say « check, check and triple check ». I actually hate that outlook on life, the check list approach. The notion that there is such a thing as a « perfect life » and its composed of bullet points to collect. It fells reductive, joyless and very much motivated by societal constructs – if not exclusively. So this is me, focusing on the journey rather than the destination – she said because she’s a very original person.

And the journey has me, mother of one, partner to a rather incredible man, moving into Jeannine’s house with a blank page of a garden to figure out.

From what I can tell, Jeannine, for all her decisiveness when it came to her house, wasn’t big on gardening. She planted (or just maintained preexisting) shrubs and trees along both walls of her long, rather narrow, garden and that was it. No revolutionary designs, just a bit of a boring green strip.

Not our idea of what a garden should be. (Note that I say « our » but « my » would be more accurate albeit less inclusive… I can’t help it, I have very strong ideas when it comes to design, any kind of design.)

On the 7th of November, we divided the garden in two and set about getting the first half ready for next spring.

What the garden looked like on the 5th of October :

What it looked like on the 7th of November :

Garden Brain Dump 07/11/2023 – 4/12/2023 :

• First wake up call of the novice gardener : landscaping even a tiny patch like ours is a LOT of work ! Have to admit at having been humbled by this first step of the project but also extremely PROUD of what we’ve accomplished. Even if our lawn (yes, the brown potato shape is to be a lawn) doesn’t amount to anything, there will have been a stage during which it’ll have been a very satisfyingly neat brown patch. And that’s something. (Not much, obvi, but something).
• We’ve been watching reruns of Big Dreams, Small Spaces with Monty Don (to me, classic British TV) to get in the mood. Playing the WWMDD (What Would Monty Don Do) game is extremely fun. Know he’d be appalled we’re already doing without a very carefully laid out plan (bad Marthe) but that he’d approve on at least a thing or two : there will be a water feature. One day. And a green house. Also one day.
• Today, 4th of December, the grass seeds have « popped » but unsurprisingly, our lawn is patchy : watching the birds feast on the seeds for a month has been a special kind of psychological torture. We’ve been constantly torn between a « che sera, sera » affected posture and a « begone, little fuckers ! » attitude. It’s been trying. I guess spring will see us sowing again -sigh-.
• We’ve also planted on a treillis on the south facing wall :

a Sinensis Wisteria

a Montana Mayleen Clematis

and a David Austen rose bush – Claire Austen

• Have Mary Reynolds’ (The Garden Awakening) philosophy in mind. Will not be obsessed with taming our small plot but I am very aware that the size of the garden is going to be restrictive. We are going to have to make choices when it comes to what we are going to put in it and allow it to do on its own accord but that’s ok. The plan is to enjoy.

Can’t wait to see how it turns out !