lavender, magpie, wild flowers

A small wooden crate is tightly packed with pots of French lavender outside a garden shop.

In the vegetable garden a magpie disturbs the peace with a horrendous noise. The usual French name for magpie is pie. An alternative name is jacasse, from where comes the verb jacasser, to speak volubly. Today I can understand why.

There is, or was, a narrow strip of front garden half way up the road where I live which has been sown with wild flowers. Most of the year it looked a mess, but in the last few days, the poppies and corn flowers blossomed justifying its existence. Yesterday, on a visit to our house, Tristan, a regular visitor to this blog, took a photograph of it. You can see it on yesterday's post in http://www.emotionalblackmailers/. Just as well he did photograph it, because today, when it is looking at its best, a gardener has torn out the flowers, leaving a strip of bare earth. It is not the first time this eccentric flower bed has been blogged. Last year it featured on this blog, and a very short time ago, Clare Grant mentioned it in http://www.threebeautifulthings.blogspot.com/