Autumn? Summer? Autumn?.. Plus my giveaway winner!

On Monday and Tuesday it continued raining - the first rain the garden has enjoyed since we were away camping in late July. The washing machine stayed off and I anxiously watched the weather forecasts for the next drying day. Thus it was that I had a load of summer clothes ready to go out on this rather autumnal line yesterday morning... The forecasts promised sunny weather, but the early-morning garden seemed in full autumn-mode, so I took the camera for a tour. The last bunch of grapes remains netted on the vine, waiting for Ben to get back from the UK - I want to share it with him! He's the one who found the vine sprawling across the ground when we moved in, and cleared it from the patio stones below, building this pergola for it all to grow over. He deserves a share of the last bunch of the season.

His lines of vegetables have seen a few tumbles due to high winds, but they are still very fruitful.

The purple beans are far better than green ones, in that they have a much longer period of being edible. Sadly, they turn green when cooked, but they look stunning in a salad! And look what's lurking below... Away from the potager, Ben planted some decorative gourds over the stump of our poor old acacia. This is a Crown of Thorns gourd, although the French call it a Devil's Crown, which I don't much like...The same pack of seeds has produced this plant with a green Crown of Thorns, too. The gourds will be great for creating some autumn displays around the garden - who's seen October Country Living?

The fuchcia was here when we moved in too, but it was completely crammed against the wall by a large and inappropriately-placed bush. We hauled the bush out of the ground after some heavy rain a few years ago, and replanted it successfully. Now the fuchia has free-rein in my shady garden, even thriving amongst the scaffolding!This is the part of the garden where the workmen are, how shall we put it, busy? No, busy would be too much. There are frenetic periods of activity and then a lot of nothing, but somehow it's all getting done...This is what they've been replacing - the old, rotting timbers of our front patio roof have been replaced by an artisan-made frame with brick pillars. How's that for buying handmade, folks? More photos to follow...All my pots have been gathered up away from the patio and pillars, and are clustered between the hedge and the swimming pool. That's 'grass' they're sitting on. It's what a lawn looks like in the south of France if you're not prepared to use a sprinkler. We have plans for more environmentally sensitive alternatives...

Round at the front fence, built and planted to screen the pool by Ben and the boys this springtime, the cosmos is producing seeds. Elizabethd has a veritable menagerie eating her cosmos seeds up in Brittany, but, try as we might, we're not seeing anything coming to ours...In Somerset, Ben grew up with blackberry season at the same time as his birthday - on Monday this year. Over here, the blackberries are ripe in early July and at their best, so long as they're near water, in mid August. This rather welcome interloper in our garden shows you what they look like now - either shrivelled or gone. It does seem optimistic to still be producing flowers!This is what happened to our poor acacia tree. It does look good with all the lichen though, doesn't it? I feel it's just about ready for a County Living photoshoot, if only we add a wholesome young lady or a few artfully placed berries and gourds...Artfully-placed berries? Country Living photos? Can I have been influenced? Our little downstairs loo is very autumnal in colour, and seeing as the resident fern barely survived the summer, I am building up a display of vintage bottles and berries to match the tiles.The handthrown vase from Ele at a Bit of Pink Heaven sits very snuggly among them all, I think. Tune in tomorrow to see if I have a bit of luck with some French Vintage Apothecary's bottles, by the way. I am not teasing, Liz, I am just in the dark myself - the Troc Shop refused to sell them to me today, because the vendor hadn't set a price! Mustn't think about it too much... Won't sleep...Some of them have hand-written labels, you know...

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Stop! Moving swiftly on, I was inspired to put on this lovely, looks -like-handmade-but-actually-cost-1-euro-in-a-Clare's-Accessories-deal, autumn necklace. Well, I won't be doing any more of THAT kind of shopping for a year!
So there it was, autumn. Today it was 30 degrees and this evening we were so hot and sticky that it wasn't pleasant to touch (it doesn't help having stinky boys, of course).

And on that delicate note, the winner of my two French homes and gardens magazines is Sharie, from Sharie's View to the Hill. Do pop on over and see why these two are going to a good home!