thank you French Health System ….you did it again

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Blog 27 / October 2015

It has now been a year since the blue tarp was drenched over this roof and this ancient building is oh, so slowly, having work done to it. This monument of a building is on the way to Carentan and we always comment on how tragic it is, to have left it to be taken back to nature’s way. There is however evidence of recuperation and there are ackro jacks in the windows and we have seen rotten wood being thrown out of the windows into skips. What started as an interesting grand design project for us to watch and wooh at, is going to be a long and drawn out event.

 

 

Mike and I have been playing on-line scrabble with friends and family and for a while we were wiping the bottoms of all we played.  I am now however convinced that the scrabble management  know how unbelievably smug we had become and started dishing out the worst sets of tiles and we then went on the slippery road to failure and lost games one after the other.  We were playing Mark and Shirley, they had 102 we had 41 and we had 4 e’s an I ,O and U ….where do you go from there… I am now playing in French and English and it all adds to the stretching of the mind, ability to think straight and for us to become expert on the scrabble cheat sites when it is all goes horrible wrong

 

so when Shirley sent me commiserations for knocking us off the imperial column of scrabble winners, I sent her the proof that we are actually well educated have all the books to play fair and square. The bottle of brandy in the back ground was a joke, we only drink wine when playing scrabble……

 

 

 

 

 

The ongoing extension to the Gate Garden is oh so very ongoing, and a simple little job like pulling out a flower bed to make way for a BBQ took all morning and an immense amount of energy. We pulled out the lavender which was old and past its best then came across a poplar tree stump we had planted as a twig four years ago. We found roots as thick as our thighs, so Mike sawed and cropped until the roots were free and hauled it out. We stood back to marvel at the speed and robustness these fabulous trees grow at, and that in four years we have planted, harvested and grubbed out.

 

 

 

 

Here I am in my tiny kitchen making chilli for ten, in preparation for my birthday supper.  We have often spoken about updating the kitchen and making it modern and slick but as I work away in there I feel in the right place at the right time, so perhaps best not to make changes if it is not going to change our lives.

 

 

 

 

 

We gathered on the 16^th October for a lively social evening around our kitchen table, my sister Mim and brother in law Dick sharing our joie de vivre in the bosom of our friendships.

 

 

 

 

I photographed Mike in the wood using his new leaf blower, that we think is the best thing ever we are now  always looking for tools that will be easy to use as we get older and less able to manage heavy equipment. This back pack petrol blower means that Mike can work for longer and we are achieving so much more since we have  taken a ‘make it easy’ approach to maintaining our three acres of garden.

 

 

 

Whist we had Mim and Dick over from the UK we spent hours around the table talking, did a shopping outing and took Monty for a little run.  I am always pleased when Mike gets the old fella out and we trundle through the streets of Carentan just because we can.  We will need to winterise the hobby cars and look forward to next spring when we can start all over again

 

 

 

Mike had a floater appear in his eye with a flash of light and we decided to treat it as an emergency when our local ophthalmic doctor gave us an appointment for 6 months’ time. We both had a feeling this was important so we drove to St Lo Memorial Hospital casualty unit.  Within an hour mike was checked out for a stroke and head trauma but happily was clear so the doctor arranged for him to see an ophthalmic surgeon for the next morning. We dutifully made the appointment where the surgeon did a thorough check of Mike’s eye and said it was a very good thing we went ‘Urgences’ because Mike’s retina was detaching and proceeded to perform laser surgery to reattach it. We would have expected to wait, but were relieved that we were in the right place at the right time and two and half hours later Mike’s eye was mended and is now in the care of a real life ophthalmic surgeon who sounded confident that he had recovered the eye and saved mike’s sight…..thank you French Health System ….you did it again

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

when the customers have gone home……..

 Blog 26 / October 2015

 

 

We had a blast from the past when we were sent a picture of Mike with his apprentice friends at BEA in 1973….we were thrown into a week of reminiscence and review. It is really good to talk over the past and this has sparked off some really funny and long forgotten stories. Mike and I were an item when this picture was taken and I don’t think Mike has changed a bit …..we have promised to get back to the UK and meet up with these people, but there is so much to do and achieve, but we will put them on the long list of celebrations and occasions coming up in 2016 including our 40^th wedding anniversary

We had a major setback in the pumpkin race as our prize, pride and joy caught a cold and disintegrated into a pile of mush before our very eyes. We  Don’t know why this has happened but we are now about to lift the other two as the competition day is looming and we need to prepare our entry and make sure we do not lose another one  before the judging  on Halloween day…..eeeek

 

We saw a couple of good weather days on the horizon and decided it was time to put the pool away. It is always a melancholy time as it rings in the changes and puts us well and truly into autumn mode. The pool is stored away and all the equipment stowed in boxes to protect them from our winter mice looking for a home.  Then once that is done the garden furniture finds  its way into the barn and before we know it the patios are clear and there is nowhere to sit even if the weather stays fine. We are hosting the pumkinalia this year so I have insisted that we keep some stuff out just in case the weather stays fine as it did last year. We have taken photos of where the pool sits in this area so we don’t get in the situation we were in this spring where we could not remember where it sat the year before and how it all fitted together….we are  taking no chances for next spring.

 

The Pool area has now become a nursery and all the plants that I have in pots waiting for a place in the garden are lined up for easy care through winter and also a chance to see what we have and where to put them. Always a proud moment for me as I have some good plants to consider for next year’s planting and this gives us a chance to take stock.

 

 

For a couple of weeks I have been considering the state of the cart on the front drive and mentioned to Mike that I might like to move it onto the garden somewhere, and to my surprise he agreed that it was time for a change.  I asked Mike for a plan one morning and he said we needed to see if it would move first then we could make a plan.. So here is Mike playing rickshaw boy walking the cart into the garden so I knew we were on a job done situation. Needless to say I knew exactly where it was going and I quickly made space so we could both discuss and ponder as this would be the last time this old cart will move and we were most surprised it made it this far.

So there it is, in my Italian garden where the water bowser used to be.   I needed to have the water mobile again so if we get dry spells we can take well water to any corner of the garden.  The cart has given a more authentic feel to this area and I am delighted. Mike is amazed at the space left on the drive so this really was a good morning’s work giving us a mobile water source again, an authentic cart in the garden and acres of space on the drive….. che ching.

 

 

Every week we watch gardener’s world and every week I say I am going to grow more flowers and every year I never do but an item this week got us interested and this year we have prepared our own tomato seeds for next year.  We followed the instructions and were pretty pleased with ourselves until it seems that the instructions were a bit suspect and we should have used coffee filters instead of kitchen roll but hey ho Mike put his Mr clever hat on and managed to get these stuck fast seeds off the paper.  We were pleased with the outcome and have our seeds for next year….role on spring time.

We have had some great weather and the trolley bay covered patio is now taking shape. Mike has very successfully put all the bits together and we have nothing too many, or too few, but today was the real appliance of science. The Millau bridge construction team has nothing on us as we jacked the four corners and tweaked the adjusted until the spirit level was to an acceptable accuracy and then Mike went around and bolted it all together. We now need to rub it down, put a coat of paint on and put the roof on which I can see sliding into the spring.  I am very pleased we now have a water proof area at the back of the garden, good for the holiday makers in the mobile homes and great for us when the customers have gone home……..