Me 1, Weeds 0

That’s the current score but the game’s not over by any means. To say that we’ve had an absolute stonker of a day today is an understatement. A high of 36° had been forecast but in fact we got 37/38° and even as I write (8.30 pm local) my little portable thermometer is saying that it’s still around 28°. We have a forecast high of 39° for tomorrow so goodness knows what we’ll actually get.

I thought that I’d get out into the garden earlyish on before it got too hot to slash down some weeds and cut the grass. I sorted out the front, which still looks very tatty, but the increasing heat eventually beat me out the back.

Regular readers may remember that the ground that Fabien had left bare after his ‘terrassement’ of a few weeks ago had become overrun with weeds, to the point that I couldn’t rake off the stones and roots that had been left behind and level the surface. I decided that desperate measures were in order as the weeds had grown so high and thick that simple manual removal was out of the question and that I’d have to use weedkiller.

So 10 days ago I went over the whole area with glyphosate spray and afterwards I took pictures so I could track progress. Here’s where things are now. The pictures are in pairs, the first of which shows the original state and the second the current.

First, looking towards the corner of the back garden.

Looking towards the house from the main entrance at ground level.

A similar view but from up on what will one day again be the front lawn.

Looking direct at the house from the front.

The view from the northern front corner of the house.

A similar view but looking along the front at the slope that Fabien made after the big old lime tree had been taken out.

So the weedkiller has done its job. There are still a few hardy weeds still bravely standing but the ones that I’ve given a tug to come easily out of the ground and will therefore not be difficult to collect and dispose of. Then while it’s so hot, I’ll just leave the ground bare before chucking some grass seed down in the autumn, although eventually I’ll have to kill the whole lawn off and start again because the ‘grass’ that’s there is of such poor quality.

But at least phase 1 of the game seems to have been settled in my favour 😉

By the way, the first set of shots were taken with my old Sony compact and the second with my new Nikon S3700. It’s a beautiful, lightweight little camera and in my opinion, the set of shots that it produced are sharper and with more natural colors than the Sony pictures. So I’m very pleased and can’t wait to give it a go in the air.