Winter arrives

Autumn is rapidly progressing into winter and we’ve had a number of foggy mornings and a few frosty ones, but the fruit on our lemon tree ripened in late October and the summer flowers kept going much longer than we expected. Most of the trees, but nowhere near all, have lost their leaves but it’s still usually mild enough that the grass is still growing – and needing mowing. We must decide about getting sheep or maybe alpacas on it next year, and get on with one or the other. We did discover a new self-seeded, or possibly planted by a squirrel, Walnut tree growing in the centre of the pampas grass in the garden, along with yet another Ash tree. The Ash has had to go but we're keeping the Walnut there – it should be big enough to take over from the old one in a few more years, and the old one is coming towards the end of its life.

The house and garden continues to take up our time, in between social events, and I’m still trying to finish my first book. We still have a surplus of several tonnes of stone to dispose of, and we’ve started some more reshaping of the back garden, having now cut down last of the old Leylandii hedge. Most of it is drying out for burning, but the trunks are going to the dechetterie and we’ve not decided yet whether to have the stumps ground out or just to leave them to rot away. The picture was from part way through taking out the trunks.

The pool is staying much cleaner than previous years thanks to the new cover, and much warmer too, though a bit too chilly to swim in, but next spring it will be easier to get ready, warm enough to swim in sooner, and it’ll cost less in chemicals and electricity to keep up to scratch.

In the farmland around us the new over-winter crops are coming on well – oil-seed rape and winter wheat, mostly. The vines are looking very sorry since the vendange but pruning them has not started yet, and probably won’t until at least December is well under way.  Our own vines are even sorrier – they were already quite old when we moved in here so we need to replace some of them. 

Apparently the village boulangerie will remain closed for several months as all the legalities between the current family and the commune have yet to be settled, but we’re hoping that a new boulanger will come in to start it up again before too long. It’s quite unfortunate really, as it’s giving the new boulangerie in Marignac, nearby, a bigger customer base to expand their range of breads and pastries, and they’re doing well, so it will be more difficult for a newcomer to make ours viable. The café-bar here is still going, fortunately, and we’re doing our bit to help it continue(!) We’ve done quite well at the quizzes recently, having just enjoyed our prize lunch from a previous one of months ago and coming second this week. 

Dusty and the chickens are still doing well – the hens are producing an average of four delicious eggs a day between the six of them, and the cock is up to speed on his job! We’re taking on looking after a friend’s dog, Rosie, for a couple of weeks up to and around Christmas – she will be a dog just for Christmas, not for life, in this case.

Not much of an Indian summer.

No ‘big’ news this time, more of a progress report. The recent collapse of the long hot spell through summer has brought us back into continuing renovation work on the house and land. We started with the fitting of a new abri for our pool. This is a big metal-framed structure on wheels that rolls out of the way or sits over the pool to protect it better than the original cover that came with it. I've restarted work building the walls of the grange formal garden area, plus concreting the fence base panels on our north boundary with our neighbour’s, and putting up the fence near the south end of the pool. So off to the builders’ merchants for more lime, sand, gravel. The part of the grange wall outside the gates is now looking like a wall rather than a pile of rubble and is over half its final height. Wall building with random stone is an incredibly slow process.

Our health continues quite well really, compared to many of our friends and acquaintances out here. Several have had new knees, hips, and other joints, heart problems, eyesight and hearing problems, as well as the normal ageing we all go through, so we’re not complaining. Together with the collapsing pound/euro exchange rate many are re-considering their future here – businesses and incomes are suffering badly and one of the English shops – in Saintes – has closed. The other one nearby is up for sale. Even the boulangerie in our village has closed this week. The anglophone expat community over a very wide area seems to be keeping the café-bar open with weekly pub nights and monthly quizzes, but the boulangerie serves a much smaller community and hasn’t survived.

The vendange – the harvest of grapes to ultimately make cognac – has been under way for the last couple of weeks and now seems to be complete, and the harvest of maize has been going on during the last few days. Our own grape vines did badly – the worst we’ve ever had from them; we just got one bowl of fruit from the whole row. But our walnuts are now falling and they seem to be doing better than expected. I cracked a few open for the chickens and they love them!  The grass is, however, growing well again and when I started up the lawn tractor to mow the fields the battery was almost flat – just shows how long it was out of use during the hot summer weather. Not much of an Indian summer with not much sun, but a few days with some rain has brought many of the flowers back into bloom. We have suffered a bit with harvest mites over the last few weeks though, but thankfully they’re disappearing now. Our French next-door neighbours gave us a bucketful of huge quinces from their tree that Jeanne has made into a couple of pots of quince jelly and some sweets rather like turkish delight. The sweets are very tasty but we're not sure what we're supposed to do with the jelly!

Socially we’re still having quite an active time. Our last visitors, Janice and Allen from Florida, went home after a happy stay, I think, and we loved having them here – great guests. We’ve currently no further firm bookings this year apart from Rosie – a cocker spaniel belonging to friends – in December but the airlines are still flying and offering very good prices, especially Ryanair and Easyjet from the UK for certain last minute and advance bookings.  We have a lovely set of close friends in the region that we’re able to spend more time with again now the holiday season is over. So for now we’re into aperos, afternoon teas, lunches and dinners as well as our work on the house, and the local winter programme of events has started up so we’ve a couple of bookings for musical evenings already. We’re amazed when people ask us what do we find to do all day/week/month etc. out of the holiday season when there are fewer Brits about as most of the part-timers have gone home for the winter. For us we’re delighted to never have time to be bored (or to get ill, we hope!) as winter means more opportunity to socialise with the French and British permanent residents here as well as to get on with house improvements.

New arrival – and has summer ended?

Biggest news for us recently was the arrival of new grandson Finlay, to my daughter Jennie and her husband Ian, and big brother Dylan. He’s my third grandson and Jeanne and my sixth grandchild. 7 lb, 11 oz when born and all doing well. We were lucky enough to be at their house on the day. 

Finlay on the day he was born with his big brother Dylan.

Also while we were in England we were delighted to go to the wedding reception of dear friend Michelle to Simon at a rather wet Cheshire farm. The weather didn’t dampen the spirits though and it was a great do. We wish Michelle, Simon and their boys much happiness.

At home, we were both doing reasonably health-wise and trying to make sure it continues that way. Unfortunately though, Jeanne has been diagnosed with bronchiectasis following a cold and cough she caught following our UK visit in late July. The excellent French health service arranged for a CT scan very quickly which identified it and we’re hoping the problem won’t be so serious as to cause much trouble.  It’s been too hot for us to do much serious exercise for some months but this week there was a huge line of storms that brought the temperatures down by 10 degrees C, with lots of much-needed rain, and it did a bit of damage in both France and the UK. Hopefully it will pick up a bit before autumn properly sets in, but at least it’s now cool enough to get on with some jobs – and maybe a bit of exercise!

The harvest has been mixed hereabouts this year. Last autumn’s sowing of canola / oil seed rape flowered very early this spring; most of it was harvested some time ago and hay was taken off very early. Most cereal crops have finished harvesting now, while the lanes were full of combine harvesters and tractors with huge trailers buzzing about taking the massive crops of grain to the co-operative – there were mountains of wheat and rye there for several weeks until they could get enough transport to take it away. Sunflowers were planted very late because of the late spring rain but are just finishing flowering and starting to be harvested, and maize is also fully grown. Maize is always watered heavily but this year a lot of the sunflowers have been watered as well. Lots of new plantings of grape vines have been made again this year, for the cognac distillers, so there must still be plenty of money in that business. Our own vines are fruiting but the low summer rainfall will keep the crop size down. We’re still harvesting tomatoes and main-crop potatoes but have lost several fruit bushes because of lack of rain. The local vineyards don’t seem too happy – the dry summer reduced volume into the vines and the current rain will dilute the content of the grapes. But the vendange – the grape harvest – is still a few weeks away; then we’ll have more harvesting machines all around us again.

We’re looking forward to welcoming our currently final booked visitors of the year, in a week or two’s time. Unfortunately the best of the weather may have deserted us but it should still be reasonable and we intend to give them a happy experience in our bit of France.  From then for the rest of the year we’ll most likely just settle into social events with neighbours and local friends, plus get on with a blitz of work on the property. However, Ryanair have go a very special offer on for October – seats from £9.99 – if anyone would like a late visit.  But need to book by this weekend for the best prices. Working holiday-makers specially welcome!