Now you see, now hopefully don't!

When we bought our land, we realized there was a big house right in front of our garden. We hesitated, as French people dislike houses with "vis à vis", they prefer to be able to relax in their own garden under privacy.

Don't know why, our neighbore decided to install so many windows on the North side of their house. It didn't bother me much, as I got used to those non privacy houses in Malaysia. 

So we finally did something to it. We bought 12 trees that would have green leaves during all 4 seasons, hopefully it would hide the view gradually. Hubby is conscious that he has a lot of maintaining works to do, as we can't let the trees grow too high.

I have never expected that planning trees needed so many times. It took hubby and my FIL the whole weekend. They had to dig up holes enough to put the tree in. It was hard work. On Sunday, an old lady cameby to tell them to stop as they were making some noise while digging. Oh, the sacrosanct Sunday. Hubby was supposed to mow the lawn but it was pu on hold. So no lawn mowing on Sunday then.

Lawn : one month after

One month after planting the lawn, here's how much they have grown.

The seeds turned into grass two weeks after, we were so excited!

The man has been working on all sort of tasks, rain or shine. He was working on installing some protections on the borders between the soil and the wood deck to prevent the soil from going under the deck and to reduce the humility from the soil destroying the wood. 

One month after:

He removed the soils while installing the protection and put them back after, that's why the areas around the deck have not yet growing.

The South side : lawn growing except the part which was served as a passage to walk to his vegetable garden.

The North side.

The East side.

In between, they cleared the weeds along the border with our neighbor, and put a plastic protection to prevent weeds from growing again.

And, we are far from finishing. They are going to build a small wall between our garden and the neighbor's. The materials have arrived : sand, cement, bricks, woods, strings...Another weekends of work are waiting....Hopefully the weather won't be too harsh for them...

Planting the lawn

When we bought this land, I would have never thought that we would have a hilly garden.

 It looked flat to me, so I was foreseeing an expanded straight forward lawn.

March 2015: The day the foundation was carried out, they dug out hills of soil. We posted on several sites to ask if someone needed our soil, but nobody was interested. 

July 2015: After spending 5000 euros damping the soil, we yielded. The remaining soil was spread out to form three levels. Gone was my imagination of a straight and even garden.

Aug 2015: I was given the task to loosen the soil and started planting some mustard. Frankly I was not motivated, I only did a very small part.

Mustard planted to fertilize the soil. Aelig spread all the seeds that were meant for 400m². It grew rampantly after.

For around one year, the garden was abandoned as we were overwhelmed with other tasks. Excepted a small area for our kitchen garden where hubby grew tomatoes, chilies, pumpkins, French beans, green beans, and raspberries. We started removing specific weeds that would be hard to unroot after, and most of the grass and weeds were finally cut off at the beginning of Oct 2016. We chose to not use pesticides to kill the weeds as we want the garden to remain chemical free.

The garden shape still didn't please us. Hubby decided to call back the builders to remove the extra soil that we didn't damp.

Three loads of truck, sent to a specific dumpster that we had to pay for.

The earthmover also helped loosen the soil, and scraped the weeds from the surface.

Hubby and my FIL started to prepare the soil. They sorted out the stones, the debris, roots with garden and landscape rakes.

 It involves a lot of work. Hubby had to use a wheelbarrow to transport stone, roots, debris, construction damps...

Since the soil was already broken down by the earthmover, we didn't rent a motorized cultivator to do the job. Instead, I used the garden folk to dig out stone and weeds buried under. It was so much easier to do after the earthmover did the preliminary job.

Roots, stone to filter and remove

It was a team work for the whole family

                                       The whole land has to look like this before seeding

                                                                            Seeding

                        Using a roller to compact the soil and to let the seeds remain in the soil

After 5 days of team work, the garden was finally looking good. It will look geogeous when the lawn growths, I hope!

PS : Some people used landscaping contractor to prepare their lawn, but it was very expensive. Our neighbore did it in one day, he invited a friend who was a landscape contractor, plus 3 other friends. 5 of them started at 8am, and they finished around 6pm. They had less tasks though as their land was flat whereas ours have a lot of slops to take care of.

After weeks of slaving in the garden

When we were building our house, I was so naive to think that having a lawn or growing something in our garden would involve only spreading seeds, watering and some maintenance. It seems that reality always wins over naivety. After the builders had spread back the soil they dug out previously for the foundation, I was told to use a garden folk to loosen the soil, remove roots, weed, stone. I had never done this before and there was a monster in my mind : as someone working mainly with computer, I do not wish to have to sweat in the garden while my blonde neighbor was dolled up in her dress, probably watching me slaving in the garden. It took me a while to overcome this thought, I managed to work on a small part of the garden, which turned into our vegetable garden today. Then we were occupied with other stuffs, the garden was abandoned for even after we moved in.

 The state it was when we moved in.

One month after, weed spreading everyway

Hubby was too busy with other projects like building the wood deck. Meantime weeds were growing higher and higher as summer begun.

At the end of summer, we had rampant weed problems. My MIL taught me to cut off (unroot when I can) different kind of weeds (rumex, thistle), but we left others because I was told that it would be removed one day by a machine when we will be growing our lawn.

In Septembre, my FIL told me that I should cut off all the weeds or grass with a sickle. I had around one month to do it (hubby was still occupied with other projects), so weekends and free time were spent removing weeds.

A friend came to help me one Sunday, which I was grateful, and hubby helped to transport all the cut off weeds to a dumpster station.

After weeks of slaving in the garden, we managed to cut off most grasses as instructed. This prepared the beginning process of planting the lawn.

Go get your own potatoes!

Last weekend, we had BBQ as dinner and I wanted to grill some potatoes. The house was running out of potatoes, and hubby said:"there are a lot sleeping in the garden, just go get it!" Instead of using the heavy garden fork, I used this small tool to dig out some fresh potatoes. They were simply yummy.

We discovered this in the garden. Personally I found it painful to eat artichoke. My Bolivian told me that there are a lot of these in her parents' garden back home and they didn't know they could eat them. When the French went there for a visit, the parents kindly asked the guests to just take them all.

The strawberries should be well protected until the net, but still we found some of them had been half eaten by the birds.

Zucchini plants are growing like hell.

See how big are they? For reference, the small ones in the middle are those that you could find in the supermarket. The big ones have too many seeds.

My onion flower

One day at home I saw hubby put an onion on a small cup. This onion grows and it flowers! Amazing I told hubby:"Wow I didn't know onion can flower!"


He was shocked and laughed hilariously. "This is not an onion, this is a bulb!" He later told his parents about it. But, isn't bulb looks like an onion?

Now this beautiful flower becomes my "onion flower". Isn't it amazing? This flower just grow only on water and a cup without soil.


I feel like spring is here already. Look the tree starts to have some buds!

Our first cherry tomato is here!

Gardening is such a rewarding hobby.