Summer in French Gardens: Pyramids galore!

I started off my day on Wednesday weeding. There are always more circles with plants to annihilate! After lunch, Cyril asked me brought me over to a section of the garden that is closed to visitors. It's near the chickens and the compost pile, which aren't very sexy in a traditional and formal French garden.

They say they feel unloved. Don't believe them.
They have satellite TV!

Again, I was handed a pair of hedge trimmers and given a 30 second introduction on how to trim pyramidal topiaries. You never start at the top or bottom, always in the middle on one of the corners. Then you make a small swath on the edge (sound familiar?), moving up first, and then down. Step back and ponder seriously. Once you think you have the line right, make the teeny tiniest cuts you can and shave that sucker down! You start with something that looks like this:

Fuzzy boxwood is fuzzy.

Not too bad a start, eh? These guys get trimmed once a year, so this is about as grown out as they get. Here's what this one looked like after I was finished with it:

Much pointier now.

The right side of is looks good, the left is... not as straight as it should have been, but I got tired of fussing with it. All in all, not a bad first try. There were quite a few of these pyramidal shaped boxwoods in this side garden, and I got to practice a bunch both Wednesday and today. Then, I spent a little time weeding and graduated to a new shape: the double ball! I have no idea what the technical name is, so we're sticking with that one. Instead of the 30 second introduction, Cyril merely pointed at it and said it used to be ball shaped, and to fix it. Then he walked away, checking on me a few times while I was working.