I have spent a long time travelling and have started gardens on the tiniest window ledges and the most unpromising balconies, but I always wanted a real garden of my own. Having finally stopped travelling and taken root in France, my garden has become my passion. I have had Multiple Sclerosis for a few years now and the compensation for less energy has finally been having more time to enjoy my garden. I started this blog as a way to share the extraordinary delight I take in the plants and wildlife that make up my garden with others and to give me a way back into the garden every day.
Oh and I am up to 316 species of moths identified in the garden!
Cathy's real country garden 
I love seeing your gardens. And, since it is my dream to live in France one day, even for just a few months, I am so happy to have found your blog!
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Hi another Cathy, I really enjoyed finding your blog too. I like your strength , your humour and your caring😀
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Your garden is beautiful. 🙂 Glad to have found your blog. xx
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Green things everywhere make things feel better! glad you enjoyed the post.
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Hi Cathy, if I wish to follow your blog by email where do I sign up?
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If you are looking on WordPress, you just click on the follow button.
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Dear Brian, there is a very small box appears at the bottom right hand corner of any blog you read that you can click to follow. Hope this helps.
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Hello Cathy, I have never noticed that before, I always prefer to sign up for email notification rather than the reader. I have signed up. It will be interesting to see if I also receive an email notification as well.
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Dear Brian,
I hope it works out for you. I have just followed you by pressing the little button too.
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Hi Cathy – I started following you a while ago, but have had a rather indifferent blogging year, so finally refocused on the fact that you are also gardening in France! Great, want to ‘meet’ more France-based garden bloggers. Back soon – meanwhile have a great new year!
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Good to be in touch and I hope you enjoy the Dany Boon film!
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Hi Cathy and thanks for your comment on my blog. We are almost neighbours from the Swiss side of the Jura. I live on the other side, The seventh chain being in my back garden in Solothurn, Switzerland. I have just had my little garden remodeled with two raised beds as bending down is no longer my thing. Nice to meet you
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We are close. I can see the Swiss border from my slice of France and walk over it through the woods on good days. Maybe well meet one day! I hope you continue to feel better. MS is so wierd how it comes and goes, but I try to be positive too and concentrate on the bits when it goes!
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Hi Cathy! Thanks a lot for visiting my blog, we are neighbours as well! I’m living near Basel!
We love our garden well and our hobby is beekiping and cooking! We have many kind of fruits in our garden and I really love to prepare homemade food with them.
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I am just over the border in France, but I work in Reinach. I thought you must be near Basel when I saw the pictures of the Feldschlosschen brewery! Very good to meet you!
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We can see Reihnach from our house, so we are very very close. Please write me to goartandkitchen@gmail.com and I will give you my contact. Hope to meet you once …when the actual situation will be over. Thanks a lot!
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We have family in the French Jura – and recently posted about a swallowtail butterfly we hatched there (we hatch butterflies in our garden in Sweden, but in the gardens of our family Switzerland and France the swallowtails are more common, and they’re so beautiful). Gardening with insects at the forefront is our passion as well! We’re close to recording 200 species of moths in our garden now. Thank god for other nerds in the world!
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That is an impressive number of moths!
Swallow tails adore fennel plants and I have learnt to leave a couple of bulb fennels to bolt and flower for the swallow tail caterpillars . The butterflies are not really common here, but I am doing my best.
Elephant hawk caterpillars like evening primrose plants too by the way. 🐛🐛
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Yes – we found the catepillar we hatched on fennel. We kept it fed with fennel from MANOR (at was a Swiss Swallowtail). And it hatched in the Jura, so beautiful. Apparently you can also feed the larvae of carrot – my husband who’s Swiss used to do that as a child
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That must have been expensive from Manor!🐛🐛
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yes – haha! The most expensive butterfly ever! We were visiting family and had no other way to get fennel…
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