Planting Onions and More Weeds

Ailsa Craig onion plants from Johnny's
Ailsa Craig onion plants from Johnny's

Hard to believe that these will ever grow again.  I’ve always grown my own from seed and always had small (but yummy) onions.  Ailsa Craig, a sweet, large (for others) onion is my favorite.  When I saw that Johnny’s had them as plants for sale I decided to try them.  They arrived on a Wednesday and instructions said do not water, leave in a cool dry place.  They should be able to live for three weeks off the bulb.  So this is what they looked like on Saturday.

planted onions
planted onions

Cleaned off the dry stuff and trimmed the ends again.  Planted in a staggered swath like little solders.  Slightly drunken soldiers but that’s my fault.  Johnny’s suggested an elaborate system of raised beds and a trough running through the middle with a couple of inches of fertilizer in it.  I gave up on that plan when I read that the rows needed to be 36″ apart.  It may grow prize winners but I don’t have that kind of space.

 

As I was harvesting compost from a sort-of pile around the sort-of wood pile; well decomposed for a wood pile at this time; I found another plant where it should not be.  But what a pretty picture!

Bleeding Heart on the woodpile
Bleeding Heart on the woodpile

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As well as a large thistle hiding under the edge of the tarp in the purchased soil.  I don’t have problems with thistle, so expect this is another hitchhiker with that exotic, strangely alkaline stuff.  Notice the finely cut, deep green leaves.  If it were embroidery, you’d have to pay a bundle.  Nature is extravagant.

Thistle
Thistle

Strawberries Must Die

strawberry blossom
strawberry blossom

I’ve been ignoring the wild strawberries that grow here and there in some of the wilder spots in my yard for years, but they are taking over.  They love to leap across my mulch with their runners and establish whole new colonies in the flower beds.  They attract birds; good news, who poop out the seeds and spread them even further, bad news.  I probably will never be able to completely kill them off.  This is about the benefits of losing the battle.  It’s all about things that are out of their place.  Most of us call them weeds.  Some of us look the other way and hope the neighbors understand.

The next three pictures are from my lawn.  Bugleweed is actually a bigger problem, if these things are a problem to you, but it’s not open yet.  You can see a tight bud mixed in the shot of the blue violets.

violets in the lawn
violets in the lawn

 

white violets in the lawn
white violets in the lawn

Chrysogonum, the garden friend who gave it to me admitted it was a little invasive.

Chrysogonum
Chrysogonum

Then I moved on to the neighbors.

I thought these were violets with an upright habit until I got close.  Phlox?  That’s my best guess because they were growing in the lawn near the pink phlox below

 

unknown
unknown
unknown and violets in the grass
unknown and violets in the grass
pink phlox
pink phlox
weeds
weeds
out of place iris
out of place iris

 

 

This is not a weed but definately out of place.  Friends suggest I can blame the gardener.

Good plan.

 

Canolli wishes she could work with me in the garden but I signed a contract that she and sister would be indoor cats.  And we have coyotes.

 

 

she believes she's in the wrong place
she believes she’s in the wrong place

 

Paris Agricultural Salon and a Political Encounter

[wpvideo uZF6aBqp]The thing is, I don’t like crowds. And the Paris Agricultural Salon ‘s web site says that I was one of 681,213 visitors; it felt like most of them were there on the same day I visited. One of the many reasons for the timing of my late winter French trip was the Salon. Imagine the biggest state fair that you can and then make it bigger. No, bigger; and more crowded, too. I’d been there some years ago and enjoyed the wide variety of exhibitors and exhibition subjects from animals to growing stuff to regional food product.

I arrived in the morning and tried to head to the back of the show area, thinking maybe fewer crowds, but got distracted by cows. I’m tall, and cows are big enough to see over the heads of others. The French maintain many regional varieties with distinctive coloring for each; brown spots, black spots; the Normandy cows have a distinctive black ring around the eye.  I’m not sure I’ve ever seen such variety. I even sat in the judging area while judges slowly reviewed cows for features beyond my comprehension and watched a few (cows, not judges) make victory laps around the ring.

I finally tore myself away and decided to get back to my plan. Heading to the back exhibition halls would also put me near to the food area and it was getting to be lunch time. No rush; which was a good thing as the crowds were getting so thick that you could only move at the speed of the people around you.

The back of the hall was also the location for the small booths where vendors were direct-selling food products. It was an incredible assortment of cheeses, cured meats, wines and herbal remedies. But I had to keep moving; I wasn’t staying in Paris and didn’t want to try to carry the stuff around. Most of it wouldn’t have been allowed back into the US, even if I’d tried. I did think that the number of wholesalers that I remembered (who offered free or cheap tastes of their products) had been replaced by retailers who wanted to sell you something. Meeting the eye of someone behind the counter risked a high pressure sales encounter.

Lunch was yummy if simple; salmon in a white sauce, roasted potatoes and salad at a Scandinavian restaurant; simple trestle seating, delineated by timber and bright banners from the rest of the similar restaurants. After lunch, I intended to wander gradually back through the displays and to the front halls, this time through the dogs and cats.

The most remarkable, if somewhat scary events happened as I was wandering back through a section that narrowed between two of the exhibition halls. Between me and my destination were cameras and bright lights everywhere and a crush of people. Since I couldn’t tell exactly where the crowd was going or why, I decided to find a spot and hold my ground until I could see an escape. It became obvious that there was a person at the center of that mass who was the focus. At some point, I asked a person near me who it was and I heard “Mitterrand”. Being a badly raised Tasuni, with a poor knowledge of French history, I didn’t realize that this notable was deceased and thought he was the reason for the crowds. Holding my ground became harder as the notable at the focus of attention moved toward me. The mass shifted in my direction then flowed around me as he moved toward the man next to me and shook his hand. (It feels like moving water under your feet, btw, and you have to keep them under you in a similar way.) My irrational thoughts at close encounter, (flight/fight must have been kicking in) were first that I was much bigger than this notable and could easily take him in a fight and then that his bodyguard, placed firmly (and somewhat intimately) between me and the notable was a small man, too. Hand shaken, the moving mass pulled away from me as I congratulated myself on my crowd surfing survival skills.

There is a certain excitement in these things and even disliking crowds, I’m not immune. I found what I thought was a safer place, near a wall, and took commemorative photos of the crowd, the high hanging microphones and bright lights. Speeches were made and shouts sounded in acclamation. Once again the mass started to move. It started to move through the area by my wall, and then shifted direction again, toward me! No place to go; I once again held my ground as the notable moved toward me. This time, the women next to me got firmly kissed on both cheeks. I probably could have shaken his hand that time but for the camera in hand, doggedly videotaping.

When I could, I decided to leave by a side door rather than try to make it through the crush in the hall. There I found his cavalcade of cars, more security and police. And cameras; real French paparazzi! Someone asked me who and explained that it couldn’t be Mitterrand, maybe Mélenchon, who was slightly left of Sarkozy and doing well that week in the poles? It made much more sense that a candidate would put himself through that craziness. I cattily wondered about the big American (probably armored) SUV parked with the outside security guards and whether a French politician could actually afford to be seen getting into one.

Circling back to follow the plan, the dogs couldn’t be seen behind the crowds. Children were out of luck unless placed on the shoulders of parents. And the crowds had raised the temperature in the pavilion, along with hundreds of other animals, to the point where everyone was uncomfortable. I let the crush move me to the door, found the Metro and called it a day.

Back at my hotel, watching the evening news, along with the headline that the show was setting records for attendance, I saw a familiar face being featured. My close encounters were with François Hollande, the Socialist Candidate for President. And he had worked closely with Mitterrande in his day so I may have heard the name and misunderstood the reference.

And isn’t that just like travel! You start off with a destination and a plan for what you want to see, plants and animals, and all of a sudden, the topic changes to culture and politics!  And your trip is richer for it, enhanced with small dangers and the chance to learn new things through intimate exposure. Suddenly, an ignorant Tasuni has a motivation to watch French elections more closely, to see how the petite, hardworking, courageous and affable Socialist candidate influences his country.  Whether he wins or not, his leadership of the Socialist party will drive policy for the near future.

I would hope that my candid musings are not offensive, because if I had the chance to talk to him I would tell him how much I respect and admire the people of a country where gardens and gardening are so valued. I come back time and time to France to visit because I know that I’ll find inspiration; beauty and history, expressed through plants. I know that people need jobs and justice, but I selfishly hope that those problems can be solved while preserving the cultural values that I love.

 

Villa Ephrusi de Rothschild

French Garden
French Garden

Be sure to see both the video and photo gallery below.  This garden has been on my list for many years.  I’d traveled to Nice on both business and pleasure and it was after one of these trips that I’d read about the gardens at the nearby Villa.  This garden is also tied to the history of a woman, Béatrice de Rothschild.  She was not officially royalty; the day when kings and queens ruled Europe was over; but all of the elements were there.  Disparities of income; excesses of the rich.  A single woman after her separation from her bankrupt banker husband, she raced horses and flew airplanes.  She must have had a considerable amount of spunk.

The garden was built in the first decade of the 1900s on a rocky, windswept promotory.  According to the Villa’s web site.  In a manner much like the garden designers for kings, they dynamited the rocks that were in the way and brought in enormous quantities of earth to create flat spaces for gardening.  If you visit, be sure to use the free audio tours to learn more about this woman and her times.  The pink, birthday-cake of a villa holds world-class museum collections of porcelin and art, among other things.

This garden also has themed spaces; the French garden forms a classic vista on the top of the hill, from the vila to a belvedere in the distance.  The reflecting pools between the rough formed water feature at the end of the garden play fountains, coreographed to music in the best Las Vegas fashion.  The other gardens play down the hill, below the French garden and as I wandered through them, I would hear a new piece of music play for the fountains and wonder, what are the fountains doing with that?  This short video shows the transition from the water feature where it drops from the level of the belvedere.[wpvideo YttGZv9u]

The desk person at my hotel in Bealieu sur Mer told me that I could walk to the gardens.  The benefit of adding a few miles of walking to my day in the garden was a wonderful pedestrian-only cliff walk, along the edge of the ocean, most of the way to the gardens.The phot gallery starts there. [oqeygallery id=27]