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!

Summer Scorcher !

Jeanne in Lisbon at the castle.

Long blog this time, unfortunately - left it too long again!  Lots has been happening, the most important of which were several visits to and from family members and friends. Sam, Mike & Elizabeth in April; Cristine & Jay and Claire & George plus a trip to Lisbon with Carol & Steve for us in May; Peter, Lianne & Tom and Jennie, Ian & Dylan in June. July brought a trip to Audrey & George's, a visit from Lynne & Tony, and a trip to the UK for our dear friend Jenny's wedding to John - a lovely event that we truly were delighted to be invited to. Sam, Mike and Elizabeth spent a few days here housesitting for us then.

Sybil

While in the UK we also had a nice visit to Claire & George's and met their lovely black cat Sybil, and Rhys spent some time with his mother. Most recently in August we had a visit from David, Lynne & Charlie. So we've seen all our children here this year already, which has been really lovely.  Plus lots of lunches, dinners, trips out, a barbeque, pool dips and visits to and from other friends in our area. We even won the monthly quiz held at our local café bar in May, in a team of friends. We’ve come third a few times but this was our first actual win. We’ve yet to take the prize though – a free lunch at the same café bar, but everyone being available at the same time is proving difficult to arrange.

Apart from recognising with horror the awful events in Nice, Bastille day saw us at a local spectacle in nearby Jarnac Champagne, where we were treated to a performance in the afternoon by a large wind orchestra, Avant'age. After a cognac and schweppes the evening gave us performances by musical / dance troupes from Poland, Belarus, Ukraine and Russia. Although they performed separately they had to share changing facilities with each other - but no hostilities between the performers, unlike the politicians! Some wonderful performances, far better than the fireworks that followed.

 Four pictures of the performers.

 

  

The changeable weather of the late winter and spring settled down now into a nice hot summer. We’re getting temperatures mostly in the upper twenties ˚C, several in the 30s, mostly in the upper teens and twenties at night.  Might just touch 100˚F this week. A few – fewer than in most summers – thunderstorms have punctuated the hotter days and just a few dull or wet days over the last couple of months but not enough to keep everything growing in the garden. Unfortunately, the high rainfall earlier in the year, combined with the higher temperatures as spring turned into summer meant that everything in the garden and on the land was growing very fast, but it’s all just about stopped over the last dry weeks. So a lot of time went into mowing grass and weeding, but the weeds were growing faster than we could remove them! The garden has lots of summer flowers in bloom and we’ve been cropping in the veggie garden, with some great successes, like tomatoes and courgettes; some failures – sweetcorn and onions, and a lot in between – potatoes, strawberries, raspberries and other fruits.

 

The orchard isn’t doing brilliantly though – partly because the land there is very poor and partly because of the lack of rain when the fruits should be swelling. Irrigation from a storage tank which we top up from the well helps a bit but it’s disappointing up to now. All this attention to the garden and various health matters have slowed down the work on the house and land that we’ve been trying to get completed, so progress has been slower than we'd have liked. We did get the concrete strips for the new pool cover completed, and the boundary fence on the north side of the garden is making slow progress, but stone walls, rendering and other fences have stopped for now. The pool is looking good though, with the new border at the north end, and we’re expecting the firm who are making the new cover to deliver it at the end of August. In the meantime the pool's been getting a lot of use by our visitors as well as ourselves.

Our health front has been a bit mixed.  Jeanne has now had operations on both her eyes to remove cataracts and have corrective lenses inserted, so she now only needs glasses for driving. Jeanne’s delighted with the result and says her eyesight is better than it’s been for 50 years or more! She’s evangelical about the op to everyone with cataracts.  Rhys also embarked on some more medical treatment, to remove a skin carcinoma that he’s had for some time. The dermatologist referred him to a surgeon who performed a clever but bigger than anticipated operation last week. It’s now starting to settle down and he now has a nurse coming in daily to clean and dress the wound – 15 stitches in the face! He hopes there won't be much of a scar left. Anyway the nurse – Séverine – is very nice so he’s not complaining! Fortunately PSA monitors of his previous treatment have now stabilised so fingers crossed on that score into the future. We must say we are so impressed with the French medical system - very thorough, not expensive but almost everything charged a small amount for, so no need or scope for a 'free' or 'private' service distinction. Very short waiting times, patients treated as adult human beings - given full details of tests etc, and genuinely take your wishes into account; home visits even for nursing follow-up care, etc. etc.

Dusty, our cat, continues in good form but we’ve had a bit of drama with the hens. The old browns have mostly finished laying and a couple of them have died so we decided to get more, some of a different breed, some similar. Apparently the browns are bred mainly for commercial egg producers to give one egg a day each for two to three years and thus use up all their eggs quickly and then die off. So now we have four brown ones and three whites – Bourbonnais, we think, almost identical to White Sussex – and a matching cockerel to ‘look after’ them all (!) He’s just getting the hang of what he’s there for, but was a slow learner and isn’t at all aggressive, which cocks are supposed to be (and need to be to protect their flock).  We’re having to come to terms with the pattern of life for chickens – very fragile at first and a short but, we hope and try, happy life for them, with a continuous turnover of hens and their egg supply varying from feast to famine and back all the time. 

It doesn’t really cost in economically but we feel it’s worthwhile as we know the eggs come from chickens that are as happy as we can make them in a healthy, spacious, free range environment with good food and care. And the eggs are delicious!  We had a slight panic recently when our neighbours discovered a family of fouines – stone martens – living in the vicinity that have been stealing eggs, and will kill the hens if they get in the way, but the locals are trying to catch them and hopefully the cock will be able to defend his hens.

As well as visitors and Jeanne's eye ops, June and July were full of other essentials including Rhys’ driving licence saga – he now has a French one but the process to get it didn’t work well. So as besides attending to Rhys’ health in August we’re catching up with admin and social events and preparing for more visitors later. We have another UK trip coming up in a few weeks for another wedding - Michelle and Simon - and a new baby on the way, together with more visitors here in August, September and just into October, though there are still a few gaps when we can welcome more. Do get in touch if you’d like to come out but don’t fix dates until you’ve spoken with us.  Best routes are the TGV train from Lille or Paris to Angouleme or Bordeaux, or flights to La Rochelle, Bordeaux or Limoges, in that order, or even to drive – we’re between five and nine hours from the French channel ports, depending which one you go for, but a number of our visitors have been fitting in time with us as part of a bigger touring holiday. From the UK the Eurostar train to Lille is much better than changing at Paris, as it’s just a platform swap at Lille rather than different stations in Paris. Ryanair’s new Manchester – Limoges route is proving popular and reasonable for most from the north of the UK. With luck it might get extended beyond October.

We’re not going to comment on the Brexit fiasco! (Have done that enough elsewhere). What will be will be, or perhaps not, but either way will have to be lived with.

Hope you’re all enjoying summer, best wishes everyone.

Spring a-Springing

The weather has continued mild into spring, with only a handful of nights when the temperature has dropped below freezing point all winter. However, we’ve had much more rain than is usual hereabouts and a few gales, so we had to drain excess water out of the pool three or four times through the winter.  Temperatures are climbing now and everything in the garden is springing into life. Buds are breaking and blossom is out on the trees and shrubs, and our daffodils and narcissi have been magnificent as usual. 

We have to do a little work around the pool to accommodate a more solid cover we’ve ordered to stop the rain filling it and to keep out leaves and ash-keys that mess up the chemical balance of the water. We are taking the opportunity to do some landscaping to that part of the garden to make it look even better. This week we have a new border at the north end of the pool, partially stocked already with shrubs and flowers, and we are pushing the hedge back at the south end to accommodate the cover panels when they’re telescoped. The shrubs from that end have been migrated around the garden, forming the basis of a new shrub island at the north west corner. 

The weather has been great the last few days and forecast to continue, so we’ve been out on the garden working mostly, but had a lovely day off on Sunday when friends in a nearby village invited us for lunch and to take us to a ‘degustation’ (tasting) at their local distillery. Every village has a number of them here – as we’re in the Petite Champagne ‘cru’ for cognac production. We had a terrific time sampling Monsieur’s enormous stock of cognacs going back over 50 years, followed after staggering back 100metres to their place, by a super lunch with our friends, and we came home with a bottle of the good great stuff!

We’re both continuing reasonably healthily despite the ever-encroaching limitations that age forces upon us, but we’re usually getting out for a walk several days each week and now that I’m more active again we’re getting more jobs done around the place, which also helps to keep us fit.  Have to pace myself in the garden though; it’s too easy to overdo things and my back is not improving any more.

We’ve been buying materials for more jobs around the house, mostly for inside while the weather wasn’t great. We bought a new floor and fitted wardrobe set for the middle bedroom and have now installed them, and we bought lots of rock-wool insulation for the loft over the bureau, about a third of which is now laid. It makes a difference already and should have a beneficial impact on our electricity bills, though we won't really see the benefit untol next winter. 

One of our hens died a couple of weeks ago; she’s been under the weather for a couple of months but didn’t appear to be in any pain or distress so we let her carry on, but she gave up and we’ve buried her in the garden. So now we just have four but they are all enjoying scratching about their little field and happily producing eggs for us. (And yes, we can tell that they’re happy hens!) We now have a pet passport for Dusty so we can take her with us if necessary if we have to make any sudden trips out of the country and we can’t get her into one of the few catteries here.  She’s taken to watching cat programmes on TV with great interest!

We have one or two more bookings in the diary for visitors here; June is nearly full now though there is still plenty of time in all the other months.  Ryanair are changing their Liverpool – Limoges flight to become Manchester – Limoges from April until October, which should make things a lot easier for Manchester area visitors. Limoges is within range for us to pick up guests and when I looked at Ryanair’s prices last week for the rest of the year they’re following the usual Ryanair system – very cheap basic flight price and everything optional is extra. Most of our guests can get away with a free cabin bag as we keep all the usual toiletries in so you don’t have to bring your own unless you really want to, and summer here is warm enough not to need heavy things to wear. La Rochelle is our favourite airport – only half the distance away as Limoges – but most (not all) flights to there are a bit more expensive than Limoges.  The other feasible alternative is Bordeaux, also much nearer than Limoges but Bordeaux traffic can slow pick-ups and drop-offs down.

Best wishes everyone.