Hello everyone,
Just down the road (Route de Coq Gaulois) from where I was staying at Jan's little house...
...past these rather splendid Chinese Lanterns (Physalis) growing on the verge...
...is this pretty little chateau ...
...which has a beautiful garden...
...that is open...
...to the public...
...as well as elderly and reluctant wire-haired Dachshunds...
...where even on a dull day...
...there is plenty of seasonal colour...
...and intriguing activity...
...also Dahlias and Perovskia, that looks like Lavender and sounds like a Diva...
...and myriads of paths and places to explore...
...so, starting with these yellow Rudbeckia Goldsturm...
...let's add some lilac Michaelmas Daisies (Aster novi-belgii)...
...and then a few red leaves of Je-ne-sais-quoi (Godknowswhatia superba rubra)...
...and then at last we find out what the wheelbarrow was for, and Arty can take a rest from being dragged around...
...and there are more colourful Dahlias...
...everywhere one looks...
...and all autumnally colour coordinated with those poor doomed but admittedly bourgeois pumpkins in their tumbril, condemned to be hacked into heads...
...while the close-knit textures of this scene remind me of a Gustav Klimt landscape...
...and these, Gaillardias, have the common name Blanket Flower, (which may refer to the resemblance of the inflorescence to the brightly patterned blankets made by Native Americans, or to the ability of the original wild plant to blanket the ground with colonies, or so you learn, if you look them up on Wikipedia)...
...while this girl is apparently shunning her neighbour, Sedum Spectabile 'Brilliant'...
...and this Hosta is on its way out but having one last desperate effort at looking interesting...
...leaving the Rudbeckia beside this path to contrast well with the Hydrangea macrophylla 'Blue Wave' on the right...
...then the there's this sudden explosion of a Dahlia 'Daleko Jupiter'...
...but I don't know what this tree is, I just like the unusual colour combination...
and the brightening of an otherwise dull corner by even more Rudbeckias growing up against this greenhouse...
...though this one has a better shape, it is in worse shape, if you know what I mean...
...meanwhile, the whole garden is still splendidly lush for the time of year...
...but eventually we must exit through the last couple of toparied archways...
...stopping briefly by the door at the back of the house, where the pumpkins await the final chop, while the Frogs just sit there, as usual, (the cheese-eating surrender monkeys!)...
...and, on our way back up the road, we pass more Chinese Lanterns, these ones fighting it out for space with a late flowering rose. And, although Jan has now sold her little house here in Normandy and is moving into one in Brittany, which is a lot larger but does need mega renovation...
...the Fuchsia is looking bright.
À bientôt.
Love,
Philip Xx