To Me My Hoe... Together we will move the Earth.

 Best garden tool ever, It's work has been piling up. Now the onions are out  I am feeding the ground with half rotten grass and straw mulch mixed with well rotted and composted horse and donkey manure. Over a season the action of gravity, the venturi effect of sub terranian water combined with atmospheric pressure as well as the mineral consumed by plants, causes the ground to slump.Over time a naked hill can become flat, eventually the surface may become concave. The collapse squeezes out the air ,the ground in turn becomes like lifeless concrete, vulnerable to surface erosion when the deluge of rain or snowmelt will strip the soil of the fines. Not good. The viable growing surface is washed down into ditches pouring like chocolate sauce, wasted fertility . Many examples in this region, some parts of Brittany it is said are losing as much as 50 mm. a year.  Commercial interests take precedent over a caring cultivating conciergerie it would seem.
My principle is to reverse the "spillage".  Salvaging what mineral is left after over two centuries of cultivated service to Man's needs. The work has given me renewed life, no shortages of pollinators, several species of lizards and salamander. Toads, renet in the bushes, grass snakes and slow worms, there is a chance that the garden has vipers . Some rodents  and moles. Visits from squirrels and many species of birds.  Hawks and owls oversee our little patch. Occassionally we see partridges or pheasants struggling to escape our sunken pathways. I don't trouble them, as they are more intent on escape than on feeding. Rabbits haven't been a trouble. Composted straw enriched with rabbit droppings from Marie Therese's animals may be acting as a deterent against wild rabbits.  The wild rabbits can sense the occupied territory of a strong "clan" by the smell.The wild ones keep their distance, safer to glean the open fields.   Just a theory? Try it and see. This area is host to thousands of wild rabbits; they don't come in my garden.
 For all the many creatures the field is accommodating without detriment to our vegetable crop. This years results so far are stunning.
 A fat row of white climbing beans will be planted along the centre of the bed. Support sticks clipped from the hazeltrees are in plentiful supply. The job needs doing anyway, the plant can then direct energy towards it's crop of nuts. I will sow cabbage seed in the gully by the time the beans are up the seedling brassicas will be ready for transplanting. They will occupy ground vacated by coco beans. You'll see.

 Not quite tidy, I'll rake it smooth tomorrow.  I gave it a good soaking, little water has been put in the bed in the last weeks of the ripening onions.  It had become bone dry.  It will get another good soaking once it is covered by grass or straw mulch.