Filippo has done an amazing job keeping our garden alive over the summer. Between the time we left in late June and when I returned last week there was no rain, so he was at the house several times a week to water the garden. Luckily we have our own spring, but it is a huge job.




The plants all look a bit tired and dried out after the heat, but most things have survived. Our local wild goats are now sneaking in to eat things and a porcupine has been burrowing for dahlia roots…I guess they have to eat too.




Even on a dull day the view looks lovely in the late afternoon.


The autumn colour you see in the hills is not really autumn at all. The trees are stressed from the lack of water and the leaves have turned yellow. True autumn comes a bit later usually.

I think it still looks great, but the view when we left was lush and green and I had to drag myself away.
The only flower left in the garden, apart from a few tired geraniums is this oak leaf hydrangea. The locals call this flower ricotta, for obvious reasons.

The lavender plants produced huge numbers of flowers. They are finished now, but you can see how thick they were. We lost about 6 plants to the heat, but we can easily replace those in spring. We only lost 1 of the 35 peonies, but I will plant more of those anyway.


There are still a few tomatoes in the garden. The goats have finished of the strawberry plants.

I love to get up early to watch the sun come up over the mountains.





Soon I have the job of picking all the lavender and pruning the plants…all 200 of them. There will be even more next year when we plant them along the road up to the house. I want to plant artichokes next year as well. I love the look of the plants and if you let the artichokes turn to flowers they are gorgeous.
I’ll show you some more when autumn really hits.