Tag Archives: raised beds

Monday 31st March 2014 – I WASN’T SO GOOD …

… at getting up today. It took a great deal of effort to haul myself out of bed, but once I was out, I wasn’t so bad.

After the customary couple of hours on the web site, I went outside. This furniture removal is now postponed until tomorrow so I had a look at a couple of petrol-engined appliances that had been hanging around here for a couple of months.

Of course, they didn’t work and so I wen into Pionsat for some clean fuel. I also nipped to Cecile’s as apparently there was a bird stuck in the window.I was too late for the bird unfortunately and I can’t take it out as it’s fallen behind some shutterings that we spent a day or so fitting, and I didn’t have the tools with me.

Back here, giving everything a clean and draining out the fuel tanks and carburettors and the like, I finally got everything to work and I even managed to mow a bit of grass.

The new plastic greenhouse thingy is erected and I’ve put the pots with the courgette seeds in it, those that I potted last week, and also the shrubs that I bought. And while I may not have carrots and parsnips and radish, or even courgetttes, the garlic is going well, and the onions and shallots are close behind.

I fell asleep again at lunchtime but when I finally did make it outside, I did another raised bed. I must push on with those.

But I also had a visitor. Someone at the footy had seen me – or, rather, Caliburn, and he made an effort to track me down as on his farm he has a wind turbine that hasn’t been functionning for a few years and he wondered if I could get it to work for him.

So that’s another half-day out when we have some wind. This vehicle advertising really pays.

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Saturday 29th March 2014 – JUST HOW UNLUCKY CAN YOU BE?

Jerome Brunet has the ball about 15 yards out and whacks the ball goalwards with everything that he has got. It hits the knee of a defender, cannons right out of the area and back all the way over the halfway line to where a lone Beauregard l’Eveque forward is standing. And he has the simplest of tasks with a one-on-one with Michael, while everyone in the stadium looks on, open-mouthed.

Back in the early 70s I once saw Albert Kinsey, playing for Crewe Alexandra, hit the bar with such force that the rebound cleared the halfway line before it bounced, but I’ve never seen anything like this.

So FC Pionsat St Hilaire lost again, 5-3 this time, to this goal and two of the most controversial offside decisions that I have ever seen, each one of which resulted in a Beauregard goal. And Pionsat should have had this team dead and buried. Hit the bar, hit the post twice, kicked off the line three times, and in the dying minutes they had 6 consecutive corners to add to the 25 that they had had during the rest of the match. But to lose a game in this fashion leaves a nasty taste in the mouth.

Add to that the fact that Michael bravely took his place in goal after his bad injury two weeks ago, but lasted just 45 minutes. Young Frédéric took ovee for the second half and looked the part, but he let two goals in and you really can’t do much about that. Everyone was doing his best today.

But it does have to be said – that breakaway goal, no matter how unlucky, wouldn’t have been scored had Pionsat’s defence been concentrating. Those two offsides – how many times do I have to spell it out – you don’t hang around with your hand up waiting for the referee’s whistle, no matter how clear-cut it might be. You play the ball and let the whistle take care of itself.

The fourth goal – the defence being out of place when the team loses possession and the midfield slowly ambling back instead of having any sense of urgency at all. Consequently the defence is caught short-handed.

And the fifth goal – Pionsat messing about in defence again – failing to clear the ball upfield or out for a throw-in but showing off on the edge of the penalty area and losing possession.

It’s all simple schoolboy errors, this is, and it’s been the same ever since I’ve been following the club, and probably before as well. The problem is that there is no leadership out there in the team – no-one who can take command.

So apart from that, having had a day off yesterday, I worked today. Until 12;00 I was working on the laptop – not on the website but writing the notes for the rock music programmes that we do on Radio Anglais.

Later, I went out and dug over another raised bed. This is the one where the shuttering has collapsed and so I used those red bricks that I was telling you about. However it hasn’t worked – that isn’t going to be very successful unfortunately as the bricks are too low and so I can’t dig them in properly. In fact it looks something of a mess. I shall need to think again.

I did manage a bit of work on the website once I had finished the raised bed. It is Saturday after all and there’s no point in killing myself by starting on another one.

And we had another day of high winds. More wind energy today than we have had in the last three or four weeks combined. I wish that it was like this every day.

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Thursday 27th March 2014 – IT WAS ANOTHER DAY …

deer in field les guis virlet puy de dome france… when I wasn’t alone in the garden. For two days now in succession, just as the evening starts to draw on, some of Strawberry Moose‘s girl friends come to join us.

I have to keep on reminding His Nibs that the word is “stag” – spelt S-T-A-G. The second letter is not an “H”.


During the night I was at a boarding school somewhere in the north of the UK. All the kids were piling onto a bus to go somewhere.
“They will all be sold into slavery” I said to Michael the former Pionsat goalkeeper who had to give up about three yers ago when he broke his shoulder (and I’ve no idea what he was doing here). “It’s the white slave trade”.
“No it isn’t” replied Michael. “It’s a proven fact that driving around like this helps people relax and it will prepare the kids for their exams”.
“Ohh no” I replied. “I’m far too cynical for that. It’s the white slave trade”.

So after another early start and a good three hours on the web site, I went outside and after a really good day in the garden I’ve cleared and prepared another two raised beds. That’s 9 done out of the 12, and then there’s the mega-cloche and then the fruit bed to clear. And if I find the time, I want to dig another bed.

But one of the raised beds has disintegrated – or, rather, the boarding around the edge has. And there are a few others that look rather shaky. But I remembered that I have piles of those thin lightweight red bricks lying around. Now I know what to do with them.

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Wednesday 26th March 2014 – IT’S AMAZING …

… how much you can accomplish when you have a prompt start and no interruptions (and also, you don’t fall asleep at lunchtime).

This morning though, it was hard to leave my warm and comfortable bed because it was anything but here in my little room. And I had been busy during the night. I’d been up on the Yorkshire Moors watching two Reliant Scilitars (they were really 1970s Jensen Interceptors but never mind) come into this parking area to turn round. One of them had no numberplate and my friend said something along the lines of “just typical – they spend all of their money on buying a fancy car and so have nothing left over to buy the number plates”.

We were then in a garage – a motor trade workshop I mean – and an old friend of mine was running it and he was repairing cars like these Reliants. There had been a problem though and the sliding door to the premises had come of its runners and he, helped by some school friends of mine (whom I’m certain he never met) was trying to fix it. They could fix the bottom runner in its track but every time they lifted it up to fit the top runner in its track, the door fell inwards on top of them all.

But anyway, a couple of hours on the website and then promptly outside. And I worked hard all day today too, and with just the usual lunch break.

raised bed carrot parsnip radish les guis virlet puy de dome franceHere’s another one of the raised beds completed, with a row of carrots and a row of parsnips. The parsnips are some that I bought in Canada in 2012 and designed, like most Canadian plants, for short growing seasons. They might do well here.

As for the carrots, I had 4 viable varieties, another that expired last year, and a 6th that expired in 2012. But anyway, I mixed a few seeds of each lot in with a handful of moist sand, and sowed them all.


The sand serves three purposes, namely –
1) it gives bulk to the mix of seeds and so makes sowing easier and quicker
2) I can see where I’ve sowed
3) with the soil being clay, there are lots of air pockets and so the seeds are sometimes trapped in them and don’t have enoug water to germinate. The damp sand clings to the seeds and helps them to germinate regardless of the heavy clay soil.

There are also a few radish seeds mixed in with each row. The radish germinate in about 10 days so I can see from their leaves where the rows of seeds are.

But if that wasn’t enough, I cracked straight on and by knocking off time I’d finished a second raised bed. The courgettes will be going in there.

So two raised beds in a day! That’s good news and means that I won’t be disappointed if I take a day off some time.

deer les guis virlet puy de dome franceBut I had company today while I was working in the garden. There were two deer in the field down the hill.

It’s *that* time of year again, isn’t it? So I imagine that it was Strawberry Moose that they had come to see, not me.

But they were nice anyway. Much nicer than the usual company.


I’m trying a new tactic this year. With my soil being wet clayey claggy mess, every time I pull up a weed, I pull up half the soil with it. I’m fed up of seeing my soil disappear and so I’ve resurrected a little old water butt that I’ve had for years, bought in the UK.

I’ve put about 20 litres of water in it and I’m throwing the weeds into it. and at the end of the night I bash the weeds around a little with a spade.

The aim is to soak all of the soil off the weeds and when the raised beds need watering, I’ll draw the water off here, which will be nice and wet and muddy, and I’ll pour it onto the bed, which will wet them of course but also add back the soil. And if any of the weeds rot and decay, the wet decayed plant matter will aslo be added back.

Whatever remains of this rotted mixture will end up in the compost.

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Tuesday 25th March 2014 – I WOKE UP THIS MORNING …

… as all of the good old Blues songs begin, but I woke up this morning to darkness.

Yes, we had another fall of snow during the night. However it didn’t last long as it’s been raining for most of the day – at times quite heavily. In fact we’ve had over 20mm of rain so far.

So as is usual now that I’m on summer hours, I worked on the web site until 12:00, and then I went outside to work. And despite everything that happened today, I’ve finished another raised bed.

The rain didn’t help. It was raining more-or-less steadily, with a few sunny spells, until about 18:15 when the heavens well-and-truly opened. It took me another 10 minutes, bu which time I was looking like a drowned rat, to finish the bed, and then I gave it all up and came in for an early finish. I would have been finished earlier too except that I … errr … fell asleep up here for half an hour after lunch.

french military aircraft turbo prop flying low les guis virlet puy de dome franceBut I had a couple of visits too. This missing Boeing 777 airliner from Malaysia – the French Government clearly thinks that I have it somewhere hidden about the premises because from about 13:15 until about 14:30 they had two huge transport aircraft flying low and circling around my property.

I’m certain that it isn’t anywhere round here, but they clearly seem to think so.

How bizarre.

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Saturday 22nd March 2014 – YOU MAY NOT BELIEVE IT …

… but I’ve been outside working this morning!

I nearly didn’t though. After a night of driving rain that stopped me sleeping properly, and waking up before the alarm clock because I needed a gypsy’s, I wasn’t in much of a mood for it.

After an early breakfast, I did a couple more hours on the web site but by 11:00 it had stopped raining and there was a little glimmer of light outside. “Now or never!” I reckoned, and went outside.

I planned to be out there for just an hour and so I finished off the raised bed that I had started. I gave it a really good raking and hoeing, and then added a plie of wood ash, a natural source of potash. It had another good hoeing and raking after that, and then I planted the shallots and garlic. And just as I was about to finish the last row of planting, the heavens opened again.

Never mind, I stayed to finish it, even though I was soaked to the skin. And that was when I noticed that it was 13:00 and I’d been out two hours. Still, it’s all finished now and I’m glad that I did it.

I went shopping in St Eloy but there was nothing exciting, and this afternoon I carried on in a desultory fashion with the web pages.

No footy this evening at Pionsat so I went to Marcillat, who were playing in the Cup against St Remy En Rollat, a club from the suburbs of Vichy. St Remy was the better side on the whole but lost 2-1 in something of a controversial match.

But there was no controversy about Marcillat’s first goal. The centre-forward did well to shrug off a couple of hefty challenges that pushed him over to the right of the goal. He managed to squeeze off a shot from about 15 yards that swerved round and behind the keeper at the near post. That cannoned off the inside of an upright and came soaring out of the goal at about head height, right into the path of a Marcillat player running in. No mistake about that one.

The other two goals were from free kicks, both rather dubious in my opinion but in one of them I would have awarded a free kick – but in the opposite direction. Lots of contested decisions in the match, and I do have a little sympathy for the players. But the Marcillat linesman was clearly quite incensed with some of them, and the referee had words with him on several occasions. He was lucky to have stayed on the field in my opinion.

The temperature was plummeting while we were there ad we are going to have a cold night. Only natural, seeing as how I’ve done all of this planting. I’ve had to cover my raised beds with black plastic to keep the frost off.

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Friday 21st March 2014 – LAST NIGHT WAS THE FIRST NIGHT …

… that I had left the fridge running right through the night.

Consequently today was the first day for fifteen days that we had heavy overcast skies and rain. It’s par for the course, isn’t it?

And normal service resumed with a vengeance too. I can’t remember what it was that I was doing – it was certainly nothing of any importance – but I happened to glance at the clock and it was after 03:00. Sleep issues are back again.

I can’t think why, though. I should have been exhausted after what I was up to during the night.

I’d been away from home for a while and when I returned my partner told me that she had bought a house down in the South-West of France to let as a holiday home. Even though it was late Saturday afternoon we got into the car and drove off to see it. The house next door to it was really two units but they shared a very big kitchen. There was work going on in there and I asked the owner about it – whether he was going to divide up the kitchen and make two bathrooms so that these two units would be self-contained but he didn’t give a coherent answer

My partner asked me what I thought of her house and I told her that she had done exactly the right thing. Investing money in property was never wasted if one took the long-term view.

We went out for a walk around the town in the evening and there was the wreck of an LDV minibus at the side of the road so we had a good look at it. But back at our hotel I had a memory stick and this kept on flashing to say that it was receiving mesages – and an icon of a man was flashing on it. So I plugged the memory stick into the computer and it showed me a couple of Youtube films sent to me unsolicited, one of which was looking down the slope from the town centre of where we wee to the cross on the edge of the town and the other showing the accident that had involved this LDV minibus- It had overtaken someone on the inside by going over the verge and on the grass.

We went outside to check on all of this but it was clear from the light and the position of the shadows that the action in the film had taken place a few hours earlier than the current time.

On the way back to our hotel we were stopped by the passengers of yet another LDV minibus – a couple of adults and a load of children all dressed in a bizarre but uniform way – jackets with red white and blue tassels that kind of thing – and they were looking for a camp of some kind. I had an idea where it might be – an old abandoned hotel where things went on in the grounds – but wasn’t sure so I told them to go to out hotel, because I knew that it was still open – and ask. The hotel was called the Lion d’Or of course. “Round to the left on the Rocade, rejoin the main road and it’s there on the left”. They repeated the directions a few times, with plenty of hand movements, to make sure.

Some way further on we passed a huge hotel on the right. Someone with a Landrover crew cab and dog cage on the back was leaving and they were lowering thos huge dog – a St Bernard – from their hotel window on the 7th floor by means of a rope and harness. They had cats on leads, several other dogs and I remember saying that I was glad I wasn’t going to have that hotel room after them.

This was another one of those occasions where the dream was so absorbing that although I had to get up in the middle of all this to go for a gypsy’s, I got back into bed and stepped right back into the dream more-or-less where I had left off.

After breakfast and the traditional couple of hours on the website I started work. And such exciting jobs that I had around here – I emptied the composting toilet. Lovely, isn’t it?

having cleared a bed for the onions yesterday, I planted out the onion bulbs into the bed. 75 went in – probably about 3 will come out if I’m lucky. And after that, I planted some courgette seeds into pots. For some reason that no-one knows, courgettes grow like stink here and everyone always has far too many. That means of course that I shan’t get a one this year now, having said that.

After lunch, I went off to Cécile’s to let this other estate agent view her house. This one didn’t stay long and didn’t seem to be half as professional as the one from the other day.

Back here I tidied out some (but not much) of the veranda so that I can create a space on the shelving to put my courgette pots, and finished off the day by attacking another raised bed – one that will take the shallots, garlic and leeks. That’s not finished yet – it needs abother hour or two so I’m sorely tempted to have a go at it tomorrow.

Always provided that it soesn’t snow, of course.

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Wednesday 19th March 2014 – I’VE HAD ANOTHER …

… good day today.

And not only was I awake before the alarm went off, I was up and out of bed like a lark too. Such are the benefits of being in bed before midnight (just for a change).

After a spell with the computer I was off the Cécile’s for this visitor. Cécile had asked someone from an Estate Agency to come round and look at her house and Yours Truky has a set of keys. This visit took ages too – the person was certainly thorough.

Cécile was on the phone this afternoon for a progress report and we had a lengthy chat. Pascal, Marianne’s son, also rang up. He needs some help in his apartment in St Eloy so I won’t be doing much on my house and garden tomorrow.

You’ll notice how I’m including the “garden” in the descriptive too. I did actually manage to have a couple of hours out there late this afternoon. The bed that I was digging over and weeding yesterday – that’s now finished, potash has been added, it’s been hoed and raked over a couple of times, and now the cabbage that I bought at the weekend has been planted there. We’ll see how that lot goes on.

I started a third raised bed too – I’ll be putting the onions in there. And the soil in that one is beautiful, nice, dry and crumbly. It’s a shame that the rest of the soil isn’t like that.

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Tuesday 18th March 2014 – AN EVEN EARLIER NIGHT

Yes, in bed by 02:30. That’s early for just recently but still quite late compared to when I was away. But then I was walking miles and climbing thousands of feet then.

And awake before the alarm too, which was quite surprising seeing the distance that I’ travelled during the night.

I was on my way back from Austria last night and after a while the road signs and the names of towns started to change into French. I thought to myself that this can’t be right – I should be in a much more Germanic area still. And so I turned to the north and up there the names and street signs reverted to German and so I thought that this was better.

But I found myself wandering in a maze of corridors of a very large and very expensive hotel. But this maze of corridors was probably the service area as the walls and doors were of a very inferior nature. But then I found the foyer, a huge glass and steel area. In the distance below was a large industrial town and the tps of the hills in this town had been flattened to make sports pitches.

There was a row of three of them and what looked like football matches were being played there. I wandered over to have a look. The first was indeed a football match but it was women and children playing. So I went to the second, but this was a handball match between two mens , teams. And then I was in a quandary – do I waste time going to see what was going on on the third pitch or do I go back to the match on the first pitch? after all, surely it must be nearly full time and if the third match isn’t a football match I would have wasted all of this time for no good purpose and wouldn’t have seen any football.

So after breakfast we had a couple of hours on the computer and then outside

lettuce raised bed gardening les guis virlet puy de dome franceAnd here we have it – the first gardening photo of 2014.

I’ve finished weeding and digging over that first raised bed. It took hours but there it is. It’s had potash added and that has been well-hoed and well-raked in. And ow it has the 11 (not 10) baby lettuce plants added. They’ll do well there.

It might even have some potatoes too – I’ve pulled dozens out from there, all of them germinating, and I’m not pretending that I’ve got them all about.

I’ve started on the second bed now? The bean frames have been dismantled and i’ve made a start digging it over. It might not be finished tomorrow though – I have to show someone around Cécile’ house for her.

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Thursday 4th October 2012 – I STARTED MOVING …

… the stuff from off the hardstanding today.

I laid down a sheet of plastic behind the Mercedes 240D, covered it in cardboard (the plastic, not the Mercedes), and then stacked up all of the breeze blocks that were lying around.

And as I tool a wheelbarrow-load of rubble up to the rubble pile, I came back with a barrow load of breeze blocks and so the pile down here is growing while the pile up there is shrinking.

Mind you, it’s going to take ages to move it all – not least because I need to rake up all of the rubble from out of the sand and clay that came out of the wall.

And if it’s at all possible I need to remove the sand and clay and use that to fill in the paths between the raised beds.

But even so, I didn’t do too much because at about 15:30 the heavens opened and we had a torrential downpour. Impossible to work outside.

That was the cue to come inside and I had a good search for the mop and mop bucket (which I eventually found) and then I washed out and mopped up the cupboard that I had been building at the back of the stairs.

When that was clean, dry and dust-free I then made a start on crepi-ing the walls.

I’ve gone for crepi in there as it hides all of the imperfections and bad joints – it’s not easy working in a space that’s 1.5m x 0.80m.

I’ve painted about half of it before I called it a night – at 19:55. You can see how much I’m enjoying it, even if it is a swine to apply.

But at least, this idea of having work outside in the good weather, and work inside in the bad weather – that seems to be paying off as I always thought that it would.

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Thursday 16th August 2012 – ONE THING …

gardening raised beds LES GUIS VIRLET puy de dome france.. that can be said about the weather that we had on Sunday is that the garden has really come to life.

The courgettes have finally started to flower, which is quite a relief as I was starting to worry about them, and then also the corn has started to push its tassels out which means that they should be starting to develop their cobs pretty soon.

I was worried about them for a while too.

But I do have to say that my potager has never ever looked so good and a huge thank-you to Rosemary who has motivated me, kept me going, and come to lend a hand on occasions too numerous to mention

But never mind the garden for the moment. I had the usual few hours on the internet this morning working on the website as usual.

I’ve also had to spend some time sorting out all of my photos from yesterday. Marianne wants a couple of the walk for her newspaper, and Rick the trailer guy wanted the ones that featured him on his poor ‘cello to pass on to the insurance company.

collapsed lean-to repairing stone wall LES GUIS VIRLET puy de dome franceBut after all that, another 6 buckets of mortar went into the wall.

And this is the difficult bit because firstly I’m working on the bit that’s bulging and dropping stones, and secondly I’m uncomfortably perched on the ladder.

it’s too high for where I need to be and any smaller ladder isn’t tall enough.

Not only that, I have to carefully chip out the flaking cement that someone has tried to use as weathering over the old mortar, and do that without disturbing too much the weak stones.

Those 6 buckets don’t seem to have done much – but then again these cracks are way deep and forcing in the liquid cement isn’t quite as easy as it might

But I’m making slow progress all the same and in another 10 days it will be finished.

I hope.

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Wednesday 25th July 2012 – TODAY STARTED OFF …

… really well. Gorgeous bright blue skies with not a cloud in sight.

I was up … well, not as early as I might have been but still early enough, and while I was breakfasting, I had the fan working, so hot that it was up here.

Terry rang up and so I met him down the lane and we went off to the quarry for some melange and a pile of sand, and I ended up with about half a ton of the stuff – that will keep me out of mischief for a while, rebuilding the lean-to wall.

new potatoes les guis virlet puy de dome franceAfter computing for a while I attacked the raised bed where the early spuds were hanging about. Now was the time to dig them up.

But I have to say that I was quite disappointed. There’s not even half a bucket full here. I’ve no idea where they all went to. And after all of the effort that I – and Rosemary – had put into everything too!

But I was so engrossed with digging over the bed that I failed to notice the time – 15:24. I had to be in Pionsat meeting Marianne at 15:30 and there I was, all covered in soil and so on

But never mind. Can’t be helped. I flew into Pionsat just as I was.

That’s hardly a good advert for anything,

caliburn st maigner puy de dome franceAs well as the Sunday expositions that we have been doing, we’ve also been doing the Wednesday walks around the various communes of the Canton of Pionsat, and you’ve already been on quite a few of them with us.

Today, it’s the turn of St Maigner to receive us. That’s out on the road to Espinasse and must be the commune the furthest south in the Canton. And despite the rush that we had had to get here, we were bang on time to start the walk, which can’t be bad

st maigner puy de dome franceSt Maigner is a very exciting place and proudly announces that the population in the comunne has grown by 17.4% in the last 10 years.

Not sure about how they worked that out, though. The 1999 population was 174 and the 2011 population was 197 – that makes a 13.2% increase in my book. And, regrettably, that’s still a far cry from 1836 and the 990 people who lived here.

This population growth is typical of quite a few small villages in the Auvergne, where most of the population growth is due to all of the foreigners who have come to live here.

Rural France has not been slow in pointing out to the Brits and the Dutch living a stressed-out existence in a tiny box-like villa with a postage-stamp garden and neighbours overlooking your hedge that here are wide-open spaces with room to move about, grow your own crops and be totally stress-free.

And all at a price that you would never even imagine back home.

And the Government is grateful too.

st maigner puy de dome franceThink about it.

  • The average foreigner who sells up and comes over here brings with him – say €200,000 – from the sale of his property back home.
  • He buys a ruin (of which there are many) from a local French farmer for €30,000, saving the French farmer from bankruptcy
  • He goes to Brico Depot or Point P or the sawmill for all of his renovation material, creating jobs for the locals
  • His kids go to the local village school, keeping the schools open
  • He uses the village Post Office and the boulangerie, keeping them open for the locals
  • Many of the nouvel arrivants are pensioners – they will be having their foreign pensions paid in France and spending the money over here

Just look at all of this money coming flooding into the rural French economy. And it’s all new money too. Not from anywhere else in France, not from the French treasury, but from abroad.

The French must be laughing their heads off.

I was at one meeting many years ago when Brice Hortefeux, a French Government Minister stood up and said to the audience “you should be grateful that we have all of these foreigners here. It’s thanks to them that you still have your schools, your Post Offices, your boulangerie.”

And he’s dead right.

st maigner puy de dome franceWe saw the church in one of the photos above. It was a dependence of the Abbey of Ebreuil and although the first mention of the village isn’t until the mid 13th Century, the church would seem to be considerably older.

You can tell that by looking at the Roman-style doorway here. Despite all of the renovations that the church has undergone (and we all know what that means) this doorway cannot be anything but original.

I’ve seen many a church doorway in this style, and all available records point to them being well before the 13th Century. I would be very surprised if this doorway were much later than 11th-Century.

fontaine de st loup st maigner puy de dome franceHaving had a good explore around the bourg, we went for a nice long walk out into the countryside, as far as the Fontaine de St Loup.

This is a beautiful, well-restored spring, of which there are many here in the region as you know. But this particular one has a very well-known claim to fame in that during the 7th Century, a very well-attested miracle took place here.

So well-attested and so well known that I can’t remember what it was now. In fact, had I remembered, that would have been a miracle.

villeromain st maigner puy de dome franceRound the back of the Fontaine is the lieu-dit or hamlet of Villeromain.

And this is a very controversial place, if you are a French historian.

Wherever you see a French place-name beginning with ville, it almost certainly (although there are some exceptions in modern times) signifies the site of a Gallo-Roman villa.

I’ve told you before that one is not allowed in France to use the term “Roman” on its own. French history does not accept the principle that the Romans colonised and settled the country.

It insists that the Gauls were already civilised and that the presence of villas and other contemporary buildings were due to the combined efforts of both the Romans and the Gauls.

However, the reason for the controversy about Villeromain is because of the inclusion of the very definite Roman in the name. That would seem to suggest to some people that this settlement was entirely Roman and had no input from the Gauls.

And that opinion does not go down very well with others.

So back home, and the temperature in the solar water heater looked really inviting. This called for a nice, hot shower this evening bearing in mind how dirty I was after today’s gardening session.

And then up here to the furnace. It’s roasting up here and the fan is doing almost nothing.

Summer seems to have arrived – but for how long?

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Tuesday 17th July 2012 – NOW THIS IS ASTONISHING!

You are probably wondering what the photo below is all about – but read on.

Now to cut a long story short … "hooray" – ed … Rosemary came round today to offer me some more help in the garden and as I had no tinned potatoes for the salad I asked her to pick up a tin or two on the way round.

Instead of tins, she appeared with a bag of new potatoes – and these needed cooking of course.

potato 400 watt vegetable steamer les guis virlet puy de dome franceIt was a glorious day – probably one of the best I have ever had as far as solar energy goes (and doesn’t that make a change just recently?) and it came to my mind that ages ago I had bought a 400-watt electric steamer – cooker.

I’d never used it although I remembered a few weeks ago saying that I would like to give it a run out some time or other in the near future. With all of this solar energy right now it seemed that the appropriate moment had arisen.

Result – 15 minutes later one perfectly-steamed pile of spuds. I’m well-impressed with this. This really is Progress with a capital P.

I remember one of my best friends (an ex-best friend now as it happens) taking the p155 out of me behind my back with all of his friends on the Land Rover forum about my plans to try a microwave oven here.

They spent a considerable amount of time calling me a few choice names and so on.

And while an electric steam-cooker is hardly a microwave, it’s still up there with the coffee machine and the electric fire that we have had running during the winter as signs that home comforts are perfectly achievable with my set-up.

As you also know, I’m running a 12-volt TV-cum-video player up here as well.

Yes, I absolutely hate being surrounded by negativity – it drags me right downhill. One of the (many) reasons why I left the UK.

Rosemary and I spent a few hours weeding and I’ve never seen the garden looking as good as this, that’s for sure. We even started to pull up the new spuds but that was a waste of effort – seems like my crop has disappeared.

rebuilding stone wall collapsed lean-to les guis virlet puy de dome franceAfter Rosemary left, I carried on with the wall of the lean-to. You can tell how much I did by looking at where the mortar is still grey and not white.

I’ve accomplished quite a lot there but there’s still plenty to go and I’m wondering if I’ll have enough stones. If not, I’ll have to go on the scavenge and see what I can find.

But the wall underneath is in a bad way – there are three large cracks running down it. Seeing this made me glad that when I made a brief start in repairing it all back 10 years ago I had made that strip of reinforced concrete underneath where the breeze blocks are.

That strip of concrete is embedding the horizontal beams of the floor and thus ties all of the thing together. But once the new bit is finished I can repoint all of the cracks.

I’ve also been attacking the hole that I’m trying to drill out, what with all of this electricity we had today, and I’ve grounded out with the circular drill bit.

Of course, I lent out my other extension to Rob, didn’t I

We finished the day with the hottest solar shower I have had for a long time, and it was gorgeous.

But as for starting the day – how about 06:35 for breakfast? When has that ever happened before?

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Thursday 12th July 2012 – I’M OFF …

… to bed in a minute – at a ridiculously-early (well, for me, anyway) time too.

And for two good reasons too.

  1. I have to be up early as you know. Terry and I are off to Montlucon to see what we can find in Brico Depot
  2. I’m thoroughly exhausted and I’ve already crashed out once this evening.

Just for a change I was up and about before the alarms went off and while I was having a leisurely breakfast Rosemary rang up. “It looks as if it might be a comfortable morning so I’ll come round now if you like”.

Well, I need all the help I can get in the garden and one volunteer is better than 10 pressed men so I had to steam-clean the kitchen, tidy up in here, empty the composting toilet, all that kind of thing, at a rapid rate of knots.

And then a car pulled up. It was not Rosemary but Bill who had come for a chat. His van has just failed its Controle Technique, but not with anything serious and so we needed to devise a cunning plan to fix it.

Just then Rosemary appeared and so Bill wandered off while Rosemary and I attacked the garden.

Stopping for lunch for an hour or so was the only break that we had, but by the end of the day several of the beds are all weeded out, some (but by no means all) of the leeks are replanted, and then we attacked some of the jungle that was in the way.

After Rosemary went home, I carried on for an hour or so and that was my lot I’m afraid. I was finished off. Nevertheless, substantial progress was made today in the garden.

I’ve also made a smart discovery too.

I’m using a Xantrex C60 charge controller wired in backwards to act as a dump load controller. Normally, a charge controller senses the voltage levels in the batteries. When the solar panels and wind turbines have fully charged the batteries, the charge controller then cuts off the charge.

With certain charge controllers, you can fiddle about with them so that instead of switching off, they switch on. And then instead of having them wired as
INPUT ENERGY —> CHARGE CONTROLLERS —> BATTERIES
you can wire them
INPUT ENERGY —> BATTERIES —> CHARGE CONTROLLER —> DUMP LOAD (although I still keep my input charge controllers as a safety measure.

My dump load is a home-made 12-volt immersion heater – a huge 500-watt heater element suspended in 25 litres of water, and this is how I heat my water in summer.

The Xantrex controllers have a facility to have a data panel wired in so that you can see the amount of current passing through and I just happen to have a spare data panel that I dismantled from the charge controller that stopped working the other week.

I wasn’t sure if it would work on the one that I’m using as a dump load controller, what with it being wired in backwards and so on, but I gave it a go and in fact it does, which is really exciting news.

I’ve had 22.2 amp-hour worth of excess charge heating my water today. That’s quite impressive considering that the weather has been cloudy for all of the day. I wonder what it will show in a bright sunny glorious day.

But we aren’t ever going to have one of those ever again.  

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Tuesday 10th July 2012 – YOU KNOW WHO …

… your real friends are when you ring them up and as if they fancy a trip to Montlucon on Friday morning – arriving there (45 mins from here) at … errr … 07:00.

“What’s the score?” asked Terry
“Brico Depot has some interesting stuff in the arrivages that has caught my eye but it’s big and bulky, and we need to be there early”
“I’ll bring the trailer then”.

I hate to tempt fate by making announcements about things that are outside my control but if this comes off it won’t ‘arf be a stunning development for round here.

So where was I? Ahh yes.

rendering concrete lean to les guis virlet puy de dome franceAfter the usual couple of hours on the web pages I went outside and spent a good deal of the afternoon putting the second coat of paint on the rendering of the lean-to.

You can see what the rendering was like prior to the painting if you look at the bottom left-hand corner where I couldn’t reach. I know which one I like better.

That took me until 17:00 when I went off and attacked the garden.

Clotilde gave me some of her lettuce thinnings yesterday and so I weeded and hoed a few spaces in a couple of the raised beds and planted them in … note to self – when I thin out the leeks, send some round to Clotilde in exchange … and then gave them a really good watering – not that they need it of course in this weather.

After that I checked on the carrots and beetroot that I planted a couple of weeks ago. They seem to be doing fine and so I planted another row of each. Certainly covering the sowings over with old caravan windows seems to be the way to go here

That took me until 19:00 when I knocked off. Thoroughly exhausted – you’ve no idea how much like hard work all of this is.

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