We’ve had a pretty good fruit season this year, and the figs are bigger than I’ve ever seen them! We made some jam from them (of course!) - as well as from the black-currants, raspberries, and apricots (but we bought the apricots, I’ve not had a lot of success with growing them myself yet). Sadly we were not in Lavignon at the right time for the loganberries, this year, but we did make jelly from red currants and from white currants (which actually give a pink jelly).

At one time we laboriously lifted the dahlia tubers each autumn and replanted them in the spring. Apart from the difficulty of storing vast quantities of dahlia tubers over the winter (we gave away more than half we dug up and still had more than enough for our own use), it is a LOT of work. So now we leave them in the ground, protecting them from frosts with a layer of autumn leaves. And they still give lovely blooms!

We are visited by lots of different sorts of butterflies and moths. There’s a hovering moth, the Colibri moth, which is moth that’s active in the daytime but it’s so skittish I’ve so far failed to get a decent photo, so this is a link to someone who was more successful! But we have had a lot of Swallowtails this year, they love the lavender.