Summer is blooming !

We’ve had a great spring, in terms of our own lives, our social life and our work on the house. For ourselves we are reasonably healthy still, with only minor inconveniences and a few trips to the dentist for Jeanne.  Rhys has had another of his regular post-treatment check-ups and everything seems to be OK at present. We are a bit slower, deafer, and tire even more easily, however, as time goes on!  We’ve made a few more new friends, which is really nice, done a few more new things and explored a few more new places.

A replica of the Hermione has been being built at Rochefort for nearly 18 years and is at last complete, so we went aboard when it visited La Rochelle in April and it has now sailed for the USA. The original Hermione was a frigate built in 1779 (in only 11 months) that took the French General Lafayette to help fight the British in the American War of Independence.

We’ve not been away from home since the last update so we’ve had plenty of time to concentrate on jobs around the house.  The biggest of these has been planting 220 trees and 90 hedge plants. The trees – all saplings – were relatively quick and easy to plant, although our topsoil is not brilliant for the task, and they benefited from some rain to help them settle in. Almost all of them seem to have taken so we’re hopeful that they will have enough root growth to survive the summer dry spell coming up. 

New hedge at the back

New hedge at the front

The first lot of hedge plants had to wait until I had finished the groundwork, which meant converting a drainage ditch into a proper land drain / soakaway, then covering with soil from the adjacent bank. This was completed a couple of weeks ago and the second hedge then went into the veggie garden next to the road, where it will make a useful windbreak once its established. 

Both hedges have had a piped irrigation system, installed over the weed control fabric, and two 1000-litre water tanks feed the two when the weather’s dry.  We fill the tanks from our well so there is no cost for the water other than the electricity for the pump to draw it.   

We’ve also been able to tidy up the veggie garden and get everything planted, so it’s looking much better than before.

Our house from across the potager

Dusty patrolling the veggies

Elsewhere on the property the pillars for new gates arrived but the supplier discontinued the gates themselves, so we’ve had to re-order, delaying that job by a couple of months and throwing out the builder’s timetable a bit. We’ve made a small start on getting a new wall built on the old grange garden, with a foundation strip and pathway. Indoors we’re only waiting for our builder to come to re-plaster the dining room wall then we’ll be pretty well finished, with only a handful of small jobs that need doing and one or two bigger but merely ‘nice to have’ jobs to tackle at some point with no urgency.

Socially we’ve enjoyed hosting a few visitors already and are looking forward to more coming during the summer.  We’ve still got space in August and September though, especially for anyone who would like a working holiday!!!  We’ve continued to attend the local quiz, and won again (ie. came third for a better prize than first!)  at the May event.  We’ve had friends round for lunches and dinners, been out to other friends and gone out with other friends for lunches.  We’ve also done a ‘semi-nocturne randonnée’ in a nearby village, Avy. This was a 10km walk in the evening in four legs with the courses of a meal at each stage – aperitif, starter, main course, cheese and dessert, so despite what turned out to be actually 12km we felt very full by the end.  These walks seem to be very popular here and are (in our limited experience so far) good fun so we’ll be doing more. Our own village has one coming up at the end of June, combined with a cycle run of up to 50km. We’ll be walking!

Our own holiday comes up shortly and our house (and cat and chicken) -sitters are teed up ready so we won’t be worried about the place being empty – it won’t. 

Best wishes everyone