Lilies!

Another reason to love June

Version française suivra très bientôt...

I have been so... absent of late. It's simple. The weather has been overcast. Gray. I operate on solar power.

All it takes is for Audouin to get up and say, "It's a beautiful, sunny day," and I am out in the garden, lickety-split. Another reason for the plants to like the sun... they get attention.

This morning, the sun did justice to the lilies that have been in bloom for a few days, along with everything else. I took our my camera, tools, and what little planting soil I have left (time for a run to Florosny to restock) and tore out a bunch of mint to plant a Potentilla fruticosa 'Abbotswood', or Abbotswood Potentilla, that I have been trying hard to kill off in its pot, and two Euphorbia characias ssp. wulfenii 'Lambrook Gold', better known as spurge, to which I have been doing the same. One went on each side of the steps down to the second terrace, and the Abbotswood Potentilla got squeezed in between the spurge to the right and a Veronica longifolia, or long-leafed veronica plant. I fully expect the potentilla to make as full a recovery... as I... fully expect.

A fuchsia got shifted to make a better place for the spurge to the left. I have learned that I can transplant just about anything anytime, if I water enough afterward and give the plant lots and lots of nice planting soil. You must use good dirt.

Listen. I will say it once again, since it bears emphasizing.

You must use good planting soil.

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Giverny, the non-existant generation gap

Gardening, taking pictures and tapping on my keyboard must come to an end for now because I am supposed to pick up my young friend from motorcycle school days, Katia. I am the same age my mother was when I was Katia's age. I love motorcycles; they collapse all differences, since we are still a minority, we riders of our motorcicles.

Katia's moving back to her native country in France, the Lozère, on Friday, and I am taking her to see Giverny before she goes. We are painting her apartment Thursday. I do it partially in remembrance and in honor of my sister Elizabeth's grueling efforts the day I moved out of our apartment in Greenwich to come here, late June 2002. In return, she is teaching me how to knock a pétanque ball out of play.

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Franco-American relations

Victor has landed.

He actually ran into a friend from Versailles at Roissy, who was also "deplaning" in Philadelphia, the friend en route to Newport, Rhode Island. They made it through immigrations and passport control together (Victor said the guy talked so fast he couldn't understand a word and only spoke faster every time they tried to make him understand that they were French and not English speakers!), baggage claim and customs right to where they were supposed to be. Elizabeth was there waiting for Victor, who was in great high spirits when I got him on the phone on the highway heading to Lansdale a little afterwards. So much for nerves.

Looks like the French and the Americans were made for each other like hand in gant en soie.

Pas de soucie!

I have got to go!!!
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