Garden tools
Old ‘zinc’ watering cans are dotted around the gardens, both on display and on hand, while the lighter, more unsightly plastic ones are kept hidden away, out of sight!
The ‘Bottle Rack’ or ‘Hedgehog’ was famously incarnated as a work of art by Marcel Duchamp in 1914, but he had an eye for style and substance (« Form follows function », earlier coined by architect Louis Sullivan),
and I find it appealing as well as handy to store my clay pots behind the tunnel.
As important as it is to have an abundance of watering cans to hand during the summer months
(and the dry, windy month of April), there are also strategically-placed water butts to fill them from.
Here the ‘zinc’ galvanised wash-tub comes in handy to water the climbing rose.
There’s nothing more bucolic and invigorating than scything a meadow in late spring/early summer!
This scythe blade is a 60cm Falci (Italy), mounted on an Austrian Fux snath (the shaft).
The hay rake – hand-made in Roumania – is double-sided and angled for perfect ease of turning the windrow
(the long ‘ridge’ of mown hay which gathers alongside as you progress).
The movement, far from being strenuous, is one of harmony and synchrony, and has been described as « Tai Chi with a blade« .
Here I’m hand-mowing the steep east-facing front meadow which is planted with vines (for table grapes).
A 60cm. blade is just right to scythe between two rows and the slope gets the full morning sun… bliss!
You can control the ‘sound garden’ here (stop/start, pause, volume…)