New art and natural framing

      Not very far from where we live lots of delicious wines are grown and bottled. Cava, of course, but we are also spoiled by reds and whites at prices our friends in France dream of.  Therefore, we have lots of corks. Like some of you, we find it hard to throw away corks even when the wine isn't memorable. This year I made a foray into acrylic paint on canvas. and today I discovered how nicely art and wine corks pair up.

     Another local artisan product I started using in April to trim canvases is the weaving called llata. The fibers come from a dwarf palm that grows everywhere around us and is a protected species.  Our local group of women aptly named La Llata, teach how to do it in group classes.  They sell their soft but sturdy wares including baskets, hats, belts and place mats at fairs and at El Perello's  Saturday market where I sell my paintings and cards.  They custom make strips of lovely llata for my paintings, as shown here.

New plantings and gardens

      Been months since our last post -- we find it hard to live and blog at the same time, don't know how others do it. So here we are just past the full flowering season and unless we put out something about the gardens now we might have little to show!
      We're trying to become more efficient Mediterranean gardeners -- for us that means planting what is likely to grow well in the huerto (the veg garden), expand into dry garden plantings elsewhere around the property, and keep maintenance to a minimum with fine gravel mulch and fabric underneath.  It sounds like a heap to do, but since our building projects are just about at an end we can focus more on the green aesthetics.
        In April we went to a spectacular plant fair in Serignan du Comtat (in northern Provence) where we loaded up on tomato plants - over twenty varieties including our fave back in Vermont, the luscious heirloom, Brandywine. We bought a rhubarb plant; we miss all those great rhubarb desserts and will try growing it in the shade though it may not survive our hot climate.
        On the same trip to France we again visited our favorite dry garden plants purveyor, Pepiniere Filippi.  If you're interested in dry gardening, Olivier Filippi is the expert.  Twenty five years ago he began what others are now trying to do, plant lush gardens that require only Mother Nature's watering.   Take a minute to visit their website to learn more; they have a huge catalogue (in French, but at least the plants have Latin names)(www.jardin-sec.com).
        Our gardens now include euphorbias, cistus varieties, phlomis, erysiums, teuchrium, tanacetum and more santolinas and lavenders to balance the populations of cactus, agave and other glorious succulents.  Hopefully, after the first few seasons of watering, we can wean the new ones and water just the pots and plantings near to the house.  We've also found a terrific local supplier of dry garden plants, Cultidelta. They're open to the public just Saturday mornings, but well worth going because of their low prices and great volume of plantings.
         But enough chat --- here are the results so far. . .

Part of the vegetable garden, with tomato, pepper, eggplant, etc.

Some of the over twenty different tomato varieties - just yesterday we tasted our first offerings of Marmande, Valencia Casaque rouge, Delice de jardiniere and Belle arlesienne. Can't wait for the next beauties!

Okay, okay, we're growing corn which loves water, water, and more water.  You can take the boy out of Vermont but you can't take Vermont out of the boy, and you hardly ever find fresh corn here.  

Acanthus

Planting beds built into a wall under the big pine. This end of the wall gets more sun than the other beds so the geraniums thrive as does the Senecio mandraliscae, very blue and another succulent that sends out shoots with hot pinky purple flowers

Herb pots with laurel, bronze fennel, sage, and basil in front of polygala, glaura, and bouganvillea.

Some of 1st tomato harvest of 2012,  Marmande and 1 Valencia   mmmmm.....