La Douce France

Voila....
I have finally arrived in France. After some moving months in the USA, having to leave all I cared for in a couple of minutes, I have found my old Europe back.

These are some pictures of the area where I am now.
Since a couple of years my sister Anita and her husband Vincent live in a picturesque area of France near the Alps not far from a lovely little town called Annecy and Chambery.

Romancing the Stone

Part of my project is to create a rockgarden at our neighboors. From a non existing part of the yard, removing and replanting a tree a huge pile of rocks arrived a while ago. The result uptill now is this.. There is still a lot of work to be done.. Mortaring a rockwall like this is a time consuming businesess. Placing the first row of rocks is peanuts.. but then you have to choose the rocks to go on top.. It's all a big jig saw puzzle but a lot of fun... When all the rocks have been placed it's time to fill up the holes with smaller rocks and then mortar it... I had several tryouts of mortar mixes (I even used concrete) before I found the best solutions.
This is the result of my schlepping and hours of filling holes with smaller rocks.

I had planned to work on our neighbor's rock garden last week already, but some other job I had promised to do for Jason's grandmother and the weather getting ridiculously cold, has set me back a couple of day. From + 30 degrees C (I still count the European way in temperature as well as measurements... cannot get used to all those feet) 10 days ago, the weather changed dramatically to minus 6 C last night. All our lovely plants, we had justed planted, had to be covered every nights for 6 nights in a row with woolen blankets. All but one, the Wisteria, did survive.
It's a strange sight to see all the trees, which had a lot of leaves already, loosing their leaves again as if we are in autumn.

Well this is the result of our polution and global warming, I guess.

Anyway.. I picked up my rockgarden project again last saturday..
The weather being cold enough to do heavy labour and not getting too hot schlepping my rocks from here to there. It goes a lot slower than I expected though.. The rock pile is large enough.. but I have to dig and look for the right rock.

This is the result of 4 days work.. I expected to have advance a lot more.. but building a rockwalls from river rocks is more complicated that I had anticipated. First I have to select the rocks of a certain shape, then it has to fit with the side of the next one... It all a lot of labor and looking for the right rock. This is only the beginning.. the next row on top of

My rocks have arrived and the front yard is aerated !

It has been a while ago since I devoted some time to this blog wrote last.
Extremely busy with my landscaping projects. Some of which taking shape others not... . Ever since every member of the neighbor's family is now involved into this project, Jason, decided to aerate the front yard... This is the result of his idea of aerating the soil... :)


Last Tuesday a big pile of river rocks arrived. I am so much looking forward to begin building the retaining wall for the rockgarden, if only those huge rocks hadn't fallen have fallen into the garden and I am not strong enough to lift them myself without braking my back.

Being a small woman and weighing 110 pounds with lots of energie and strength... I unfortunately have encountered my limits. :(

Too cold to work outside in the neighbor's yard

And my next door neighbors, for who I am doing a large scale yard project, recently had their basement rebuilt, which needs a coat of paint. So that's what I have been doing since yesterday.

As much as in gardening and landscaping, I have done quite a number of house decorating and painting and have have earned my spurs. Actually last year I was very much into Faux Painting Techniques.

It's the first however that I am priming a a drywall. Although using paint fo high quality, it's not a piece of cake as I thought it would be.

Introduction of a Dutch girl in the US

Welcome to the beautiful world of flowers and plants!

This blog is new to me as well as blogging itself.

Working on a large project to transform two jungle yards into two lovely yards and gardens, I decided to keep a blog of the transformations on a regular basis.

I have always enjoyed working outside in the garden and yard in the South of France and in my small backyard in the Netherlands, and most recent in Germany, where I lived before coming to the US. I think having some degree of green fingers, nevertheless with the upcoming project, it would be wonderful to be able to share the transformations with friends and get some feed back and advice from fellow gardners.

The gardening project is to transform two jungle yards into a lovely parks and gardens.

I still have a lot to do in my own yard as well.

All these pictures are a little unorganized... just don't have the time to get a better layout for the time being... So