we have tiny patches of lawn - which are brown and tinder dry at the moment.
Any chance of a photo of your sweet-smelling daisy thingies ???
Good to see you around, Mary W!
Our garden has had rather a hard time of it this year, as the weather has been abnormally dry again, and we had that precocious summer that brought lots of plants into bud, followed by two weeks of very sharp frosts that killed of the buds. The fruit trees struggled to fruit, and most fruit trees have produced small fruits or hardly any.
It’s very interesting to see how plants of all kinds adapt their cyclical ‘behaviour’ to the errant weather and climatic conditions, they seem to have a very profound survival ‘intelligence’ that operates in long cycles, perhaps over several years.
One thing I’ve learned is the importance of living soil. Before coming to France I never realised that soul is a very complex living entity, not just dirt. What is taken out as food or flowers has to be replaced, and the insects and worms and birds and creatures that make their homes in the soil and live off it tend the soil to keep it healthy and productive, as if it knew and they knew how to work together to keep life ‘alive’. It’s a profound lesson for me on many levels, about how not to take anything for granted, and how to care for the soil myself with insight and intelligence. I am very much a beginner, again on many levels.
My next door neighbour is a talented and wise paysagiste and has taken me, an ignorant clod, under his wing: taught me how to choose and care for tools and to care for the land. Most of the tools here in Normandy are unknown in UK, especially the crocs and binets, also the pelles and fourches which are of a very different configuration, and with different manches (long and straight) from those in UK. The method of manipulating them is also very different, I’ve had to relearn, like learning how to hold and use a musical instrument. It’s fascinating and humbling.
I could go on for ever and a day! Thank you MaryW for this opportunity to think aloud and share experience! 
1 Like
Peter,
What a lovely response. My friend who lives in the desert in New Mexico in the USA is in awe of the wisdom of the desert. I think your message here repeats some of his same sentiment, and I agree with you both.
Please to go on; I enjoy your thoughts very much.
looks like camomile to me 
“Chamomile or camomile is the common name for several daisy-like plants of the family Asteraceae. Two of the species are commonly used to make herbal infusions for traditional medicine, although there is no evidence that chamomile has any effect on health or diseases.”
1 Like
I think the very fragrant low-growing and dense chamomile used to make lawns is a special cultivar chamaemelum nobile ‘Treneague’, but other flowering cultivars are available from nurseries and garden centres.
They are denser and lower growing than the wilder, less dense varieties that grow naturally with other grasses, but are less fragrant and have longer, coarser foliage.
Those in the photos are the non-cultivars that grow wild in lawns with other types of ‘mauvaises herbes’ .
1 Like