Dear readers,

Chers lecteurs,

Thank you so much for the encouraging words on my gardening... I'm still busy as a bee in the garden, but all the weeding I do every day after work is hardly post-worth.

There's just a tiny transformation I thought I should  share.

Merci pour vos mots d'encouragements quant à mon projet jardinage. J'y travaille d'arrache-mauvaises-herbes, mais cela ne fait pas des articles très passionnants. Il y a juste une petite chose que je voudrais vous montrer.

I've always been bugged (see how I'm trying to keep the title metaphore going?) by that stupid post at the back of my "verger".

I've been looking for something to give it a meaning.

And I found it last weekend.

Regardez ce que j'ai trouvé ce weekend pour habiller mon poteau qui m'énervait.

(Yes, I did mow right after, but forgot to take a picture then...)

It's an "insect shed" and it actually has a triple meaning. Do you see where I was going with my stupid metaphore?

C'est une maison à insecte qui remplit pour moi un triple rôle.

1) It gives my ugly post a "raison d'être".

1) Cela donne à ce poteau une raison d'être (et si, si, ça se dit en anglais aussi, c'est pas que j'ignore comment traduire).

2) It is supposed to become the home of very useful-for-the-garden insects as it says on the box.

2) C'est censé devenir la maison de tout plein d'insectes utiles au jardin. Si, si, c'est écrit sur la boîte!

3) It was made by hand by an ESAT, which is a company that employs disabled people (I know, I read this word is not PC, but I'm not a PC person)... It's a project I really belive in, so I'm willing to spend money for what I believe in (does that make up for my not-being-PC?).

3) C'est un produit fait à la main par une société qui emploie des personnes handicapées, genre de projets que j'aime bien soutenir...

Also, the apple tree I was so worried about is doing fine.

And  we've been spending so much time in the garden during this sunny weekedn that even Shadow was tired...

On a tellement passé de temps dans le jardin pendant ce weekend ensoleillé que même Shadow n'en pouvait plus.

But he found the perfect spot...

Magali, from the Little White House xxx

PS: Want know my secret to a healthy glow and nicely shaped arms? Have a look at everything that needed to be done on that part of the garden... here

Bringing my insects to those parties! 

Dear readers,

Today I'm here with a tale...

Once upon a time, a little (ok, she's not so little anymore) girl (ok, woman) wanted to choose the perfect tiles for her fairy-tale cottage... But in the middle of the wood (ie, in the alleys of the stores), she met the big bad wolf, aka the salesperson...

Here's how she managed to make it out of the wolf's claws...

Just in case you're considering changing your tiles, here are my little tips for you. Nothing from a designer's book, only experience stuff.

Rule #1. Be a b****.

That's the bottom rule.

Best example: ME!

Rule #2. New is not always better.

The salesperson is always trying to sell you what's trendy on the day you visit the store. It's not necessarily what you want for your house.
Best example: In France these days, everybody go nuts about extra-large tiles.

The salesperson almost convinced me that extra-large tiles made any room look larger. So I asked to be allowed to bring one home... "Not possible" was his first answer (that's how you know he was a French salesman...). I applied rule # 1 and he finally gave up and gave me a tile to bring home...
Let me tell you that if it was okay-ish in the living-room, it looked completely ridiculous in my very tiny dining-room!

That brings us to the obvious rule #3.

Rule #3. Bring it home!

Stick to rule # 1, so that rule #3 is possible. I don't know why but every time I asked if I could bring a sample home, people looked at me like I was crazy. Most of the time they didn't seem to have any sample at hand.

Again a little tip: nice make-up and short skirts seem to mellow even the French salesperson and I often ended up with the whole one-square-meter sample that's in the store in my car and I was usually allowed to keep it 24 hours at home to see how the different hours of the day played with its colour.

On the plus side: once you've carried that big square sample to your car, then to your living-room, then back to your car, you won't forget you have a back for several days... And you know how it's easy to forget we have a back!

Best example: I had fallen head over heels for something that looked a bit like that:

I was ready to sign the form to order it.... When I thought it would be nice to see it home first. Again, I batted my eyelashes (wish I could master the fake lashes thing...), and off I went with a sample of  it. I was feeling all cheerful, nearly sure I had at last found THE ONE. I kept watching at the sample on the back seat of the car every time I had to stop at a red light... And I arrived home! Hugh! It didn't look the same colour at all in my natural light as it had in the neon light in the store...

The next day, I brought the sample back and kept searching...

Rule #4. Listen to your house.

Somehow, if you listen carefully, I strongly believe that the house will whisper what it needs. As much as I love slate, it would have been wrong in the space I have and so would have been the very Versailles cabochon tiles I love so much.

Rule #5. Take your time.

I remember last year every body kept asking me "Have you chosen your tiles yet?" (said in a relaxed way in September and rather frantic way in April of the following year!). Yes, I really needed that much time...

But it was worth the wait, the worry, the back-achessss, and the futtering of my eyelashes to go from those three different and ugh-so-beautiful floors...

to...

Yes, the picture is taken from nearly the same spot, but as I changed the floor plan - more on that in a post that will be written when I have time (when will that be?) -  it's hard to figure it out... Also this picture was taken at the end of remodel-phase 1... You may notice there's no handle on the door.

Do you  have any tips you could share?

Magali, from the Little White House xxx

Dear readers,

Chers lecteurs,

First, to all of you who are worried about the hedgehog, you can breathe again, he recovered from his misadventure and he went back to his usual hedgehog night life, which means I don't see him anymore.

After saving that fat hedgehog, I kept working on the side garden... It's far from finished, but I'm proud of what it looks like these days...

J'ai passé cette semaine de congé de Pâques à travailler dans le deuxième jardin, celui qui servait plus ou moins de dépotoir auparavant...

That part of the garden used to be a dumpster and later a very dirty henhouse.

I spent last spring picking up weird things out of that part of the garden, dreaming it would one day be a beautiful place.

Après avoir passé le printemps dernier à ramasser de tout et de n'importe quoi dans ce fond de jardin depuis des poteaux en béton jusqu'à des truelles de maçon, je l'avais fait réengazonné à l'automne. Mais au mois de mars, la mauvaise herbe qui avait ses habitudes dans le coin avait repris le dessus...

I had a gardener help me to sow grass... But he couldn't do any miracle on a land that had never been taken care of... So at the beginning of spring, it looked like this...

I should have taken the picture when the cat was there: the weeds were so high I couldn't see him!

Je me suis d'abord dit que je n'y arriverai jamais toute seule... Puis, comme je n'avais pas le choix, je me suis mise au boulot!

For a few days, I wondered if I had it in me to tackle such a task...

Then I thought nobody was going to do it for me...

It took several afternoons as there was no way my lawnmower was going to survive this, so I first used a "débroussailleuse" (I'm sorry but can't find the correct word in English... so please picture a very noisy tool that cuts weeds).

Here's what I got:

Not the perfect "English lawn" yet... But I'm still working on it... I added some seeds on some spots when I removed lots of weeds... We'll see.

Ce n'est pas encore un gazon parfait... Mais je continue d'ôter les mauvaises herbes... à la main, bien sûr!

As you can see on the above picture, I hadn't taken care of the borders...

That was the next project... I had wanted a "strawberry field forever"...

L'étape suivante a été de désherber les bordures pour créer mon "champ" de fraisier...

I removed all the weeds on the back border with my little hands and then went shopping for some strawberry plants.

Before, when my back was okay... Avant, dos sans douleur...

Half way done, back hurting... Pendant, dos en vrac...

And... Après, plus de dos...

I bought different kinds of plants, so I'll see which grows better in this area...

And I labelled them, because I'm pretty sure I won't remember which is which in a few weeks.

Somehow, I managed to squeeze an other tiny garden project during Spring break... So to be continued...

Magali, from her very own strawberry field xxx