The chickens are hiding under the wild rose bush with open beaks. A little lizard has come to drink some of the water that had escaped from the pipe connector.

The grape vines are aborting their fruits and even the daily watering may not save the few clumps left. The fig tree has only big and soft but dry pale green balls to offer that even the magpies and jays are ignoring.

The apricot trees have let go of their fruits too, small and bitter, never to mature.

Yet on Damien’s plot ( http://www.youtube.com/@permacultureetc), it’s fruit and vegetable galore, with more of everything anywhere you turn: he has grown a fruit forest on a dry and poor land starting 10 years ago and his hard work coupled with his creative thinking have worked. Yes, he had studied horticulture and worked on an organic farm for many years. But nothing is like getting your own land to produce enough for your family.

With manure from his donkey and mare rather than a plough and chemicals, and with green chopped up vegetation, hay, straw and anything organic he can get his hands on he says, he has covered the ground for many years, the result of which is a forest floor with thick and soft, live compost underfoot where grape vines and all sorts of other climbers find their way up the trees.

He makes holes with his bare hands to plant any vegetables he needs just like on gardening programs where the ground has been prepared beforehand. Except here, nature is now doing what it does best: bringing in the troops…the worms! And the magic can start….the soil is light and dark and rich and perfect. He says he produces more than he needs so that his ducks and chickens as well as wandering wild beasts, can have some too.

I find this kind of viewing so inspirational.

I am going to do this here. We can all do it. You don’t need a large piece of land, you can do it in a town garden. Serge’s garden is small so he has built it upwards, with trellises going up and above. It looks like a jungle and the look of it is not everyone’s taste but he has so much vegetables and flowers growing together intermingling very successfully and it’s a magic den for his two grand-daughters. I love it. He used to have a couple of hens in a tunnel going around and feeding the ground with their poop. the hens have long gone but the soil is rich from it still.

And in the middle of it he has managed to built a BBQ and a pizza oven. Amazing.

Rob came around this lunchtime. I am so grateful to him, he is overworked and now has a hip and knee replacements scheduled… we measured and discussed and the yard will get done in the autumn, creating channels from the main gate to take the rain water down, making its way between the house and the barn then a sharp left turn after the big ash tree and down again past the orchard to get lost further away, while waiting for the appropriate time to dig the pond below. May be even this winter.

We just repaired the big shredder with Thierry, the broken parts were ordered in our nearest town and collected within four days.  It is going to be shredding like it had not done for many years when the path will need clearing for the big machinery to get through.

But for now, the heat had me stuck to the couch all afternoons until….

The indescribable feel of the warm rain on one’s face, the gentle cool breeze that comes with it …after days and days of scorching heat, can only make me smile and sing.

Could the heat wave be over? Let’s get back to work. It’s summer after all, what was I expecting?