A monthly diary of activities in Susan’s Garden.
Photo heavy, text light, following a natural timeline.
July: in which the heat sets in and everything including the kitchen garden disappears under a shady leaf - except English women with swimming pools. Kicked out of June by the canicule, Susan and her garden arrive in July to temperatures no higher than 35 or 36. Blessed relief!
It is the month where the colours of spring retreat into the parched dry grasses of summer, the cicadas begin their plaintive song early, only to be silenced by the heat, returning again as the day descends slowly and ineffectually into evening. It is the month of afternoons spent indoors, shutters closed, windows shut, waiting for the moment where the relative temperatures achieve an almost bearable equilibrium, and a return outside can be tolerated with a glass of rosé and a bowl of olives.
For the gardener of course, work remains, so we find Susan up ladders, hands in fruit trees and the just desserts of her efforts being plucked from their shady comfort, ripened to perfection and destined for the dinner table.
Not that the pleasures are limited to stoned fruit. There are vegetables to harvest and store. When the pumpkins take over the potager and the melons take their flowers for a walk, the bees dance and do their symbiotic best. Fruit follows.
So Susan builds her autumn stores and the mazet finds itself once more at the heart of things.
