Tag Archives: gardening

Monday 7th April 2014 – I DON’T BELIEVE IT!

strawberry plants raised bed les guis virlet puy de dome franceWell, I suppose that I ought to really. It should be something that I’m used to by now. But do you remember me saying that I replanted 4 strawberry plants the other day? I had a look today and there are now only 3, with a hole in the soil where the 4th one was, as you can see in this photo.

I’ve no idea what happened there. I suppose some local bestiole has taken a fancy to it.

But you can see the soil just there – clay with a barrow-load of sand worked in. That should lighten it considerably.


garlic shallots raised beds potager les guis virlet puy de dome franceAs for the garlic and shallots though, I don’t know if you can really see them here in this photo but they have mostly done the business.

One or two garlic bulbs seem to have failed but I have some of last year’s crop to plant in there to replace them. And one or two of the shallots needed reseating, but otherwise they are fine. The onions in another bed are pushing up too.

Nothing stirring with the carrots, parsnips and radishes yet. I’m not surprised about the parsnips, but the carrots might have done something by now and I’m bewildered by the radishes. They should be almost ready.

I have a courgette plant about to rear its ugly head out of its pot too. And where there’s one, the others shouldn’t be far behind.

So today after website work I went out and the first thing that I did was to empty out all of the herb beds. I have a row of flower boxes and I use them as herb beds and they were all overgrown.

If anyone wants some mint and thyme cuttings, let me know as I have tons of the stuff here. It really did run wild while I was away last year. Anyway, everything is now rosy in the herb beds and I even had fresh rosemary from my own garden in my onion and mushroom gravy tonight.

For the rest of the day I’ve been sowing seeds in pots. And here’s a list of what’s gone in –

  • Aneth
  • Coriander
  • leeks
  • cucumbers
  • lettuce
  • aubergines
  • basil
  • chives
  • cayenne peppers
  • mixed peppers
  • broccoli

They are all in pots in the little greenhouse thingy that I bought the other week.

I also have some beetroot seeds soaking ready to plant tomorrow, and I’ll also look at the rest of the brassica to see what I have an what I need.

All that needs doing then is to make some more pea and bean frames and then start some of those off, and to sow some more carrots and parsnips.

Mind you, that’s not all that I’ve done. I went to St Eloy at lunchtime and spent a whole shed-load of money, in fact the only time that I’ve ever spent more money than this was in buying Caliburn and buying my various houses and apartments. Yes, there will be a new arrival here shortly, more of which anon.

And I forgot two pieces of news from yesterday. Firstly, the mystery of Matthieu’s appearance on the football pitch Saturday night is now solved. He had no intention whatever of playing, so it seems, but someone couldn’t make it at the last minute so he went out rather than let the teamplay short-handed. If that’s not courage and devotion to duty after all he’s suffered with his injury, I don’t know what is.

And Nane rang me up for a very long chat, in the middle of which she announced that a mutual acquaintance of ours had died on Saturday. It’s never nice to hear of a death, especially of someone that you know, but this friend and I did have some issues between us that have been the subject of a considerable rant from me in the past. Nevertheless I wish her bon voyage to wherever it is that she wishes to go.

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Friday 4th April 2014 – IT WAS TOUCH AND GO …

… as to whether or not I finished the raised beds today. I can usually legislate for most eventualities that happen around here, but no-one has yet managed to legislate for the weather. And when, when I went to resume work after lunch, I noticed that the heavens had well and truly opened and there was also a hanging cloud in the vicinity, I reckoned that that was that.

Mind you, it was all my fault.

After the usual 3 hours or so on the web site, I went outside and finished off weeding and digging over the big cloche. That’s now clear, and I even managed to rescue four strawberry plants. They went in the soft fruit bed, which I duly watered (and which was doubtless my downfall), and then I came in for lunch.

Seeing the driving rain, I had a very merry 45 minutes inside doing some tidying up. But then I thought that this isn’t getting the baby bathed and I don’t really want to come back and do it again, so I put on a rain jacket and went back outside.

By now the soil had turned to a miserable, wet, claggy clay but I carried on regardless, covered in mud and soaked to the skin, but at 18:35, with just 25 minutes of my working day remaining, I could put my tools away.

Yes, in just 12 working days, many of them full of interruptions, I’ve dug over and weeded 13 raised beds and a giant cloche, none of which has seen any attention since August 2012, and I’ve sown and planted a few crops in them too.

I can safely say that I have never worked so hard in all my life, but it’s all now done, even if I am totally exhausted and crashed out yet again this evening.

But I’ve treated myself to my last bag of vegan Rhubarb and Custard sweets and quite right too because I feel that I’ve earned them. I’m going to be taking it easy over the weekend and then restart work on Monday.

And quite right too.

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Thursday 3rd April 2014 – JUST LIKE YESTERDAY …

… I crashed out twice today. And at roughly the same times too. Difference is though that it was only for a couple of minutes each time, and so that wasn’t quite so bad.

And I had an early night too, so I wasn’t surprised to wake uo to find that it was darker than usual. But it wasn’t through being awake early, or through snow on the roof lights. It was in fact raining and there was a thin coating of sand on them. This desert storm has reached over here now.

So after the usual procedureson the web site, I went out to work in the garden and, just like yesterday, there were no interruptions at all. I’ve finished the bed where the soft fruit will be going, and I’ve added a load of sand to about half of it. That’s all hoed and raked in. The soil is nice, dry and friable right now but when it rains, it’s just heavy clay. Sandy soil is good for soft fruit of course so the more I can get, the better.

I then started on the big cloche and tomy bitter disappointment, not one of my 20 or so strawberry plants survived the bitter winter 2012-13. I was wondering if I should buy some more when I saw them at the Auchan on Tuesday, and I wish that I had now.

So in the garden there is half of the big cloche to do, and then one more raised bed. I’m hoping that I can finish them tomorrow because that will mean that, starting on Monday, I can go onto the revised plan B of 2 hours in the house in the morning, then 2 hours in the garden after lunch and then finish off with 2 hours back in the house.

I’ve so much to do and I really ought to get cracking.

And another windy day today.

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Wednesday 3rd April 2014 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

… I crashed out not once today but twice. Once at lunchtime and once at about 19:30 after I knocked off.

I’m clearly over-doing it, I reckon, and having late nights and disturbed sleep just recently isn’t helping.

I managed to wake up at some kind of realistic time however and after breakfast I had a productive morning on the website. By 12:00 (or thereabouts) I was back outside and I made a start on another raised bed.

After lunch (which finished rather later than planned, as you can imagine), I carried on with my raised bed and now that one is finished too. There’s a big raised bed, the last one that I installed, and that is destined for the soft fruit. I made a start on that and now that’s about one-third finished.

When that is done, there will be just one more raised bed and the two cloches (although at the moment I’ll only be clearing out the big one). Wouldn’t it be a pleasure if I could finish all of that? It depends of course on whatever interruptions I have and today, there were none at all, just for a change.

I’ve done some tidying up in the garden too, around the edges. The border between my land and the farmer’s field is a mess and so I cleared out a couple of metres of that. There are a couple of young trees growing there and so I trimmed them and wove the young branches around the barbed wire that forms the boundary. It’ll look so much nicer with tree branches and leaves all around it.

There’s a fruit tree too that’s giving me issues. If you remember back several incarnations of this blog, you’ll remember that I planted two dozen or so when I bought the place and for a while they were productive. But my absence for several years when I was ill led to most of them being lost.

One at least (and there may be more) is still there but as a sapling it was trampled down by a wild boar or something and it’s growing horizontally across the large raised bed. I’ve been trimming it back this last couple of years so that the growth will be concentrated in some branches that are growing vertically, and I had another go at that today. It’s looking much better.

We’ve also had tons of wind today. All three turbines going round like the clappers. Shame they can’t do this every day, isn’t it?

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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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Thursday 20th March 2014 – IT WAS 19:20 …

… when I knocked off work today. I know I’m on summer hours but –
1) I was rather carried away
2) it was still light enough to work outside at 19:20 this evening.

Mind you, it was my own fault. I’d crashed out for half an hour this afternoon.

Through the night though, I’d been busy again. I was back at work in Brussels and I can’t remember where I’d been but I returned with a car loaded with all kinds of things. I stopped at the petrol station in the rue de Luxembourg to fuel up when I received a message that I had to go to Luxembourg to pick up a director. And so off I set and arrived at a hotel there and I didn’t know which director I was to pick up and at which hotel he was staying. I hadn’t made enquiries at Brussels because I was so confident that it would be alright on the night.

That sounds about par for the course, doesn’t it?

So after breakfast (and I was up early for a change) I was on the website for a couple of hours. Summer Hours as I said.

I had some jobs to do at Pascal’s apartment this afternoon and so loaded up Caliburn and set off. On the way I called at LIDL as there was something that I wanted in the special offers. Of course it had gone but I still managed to spend €51:50 there. Lots of plants and things were on offer and I needed some seeds.

But we also had a pile of fun there too – a couple of us were watching an old woman trying to reverse her car into a parking space. No other car for miles around but after a while we lost interest and drifted away. She hadn’t managed to park it by then either.

Back here I had lunch eve though it was 16:00 and that was when I crashed out. But by 17:30 I was back outside and now I have a nice bed for the onions tomorrow. But I’m not sure when tomorrow – I have to meet someone else at Cécile’s house.

But I’ll have to get a move on. Incredible though it might seem after a day of 28.2°C, apparently snow is forecast next week. And I’ve just changed Caliburn’s tyres over too.

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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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Monday 17th March 2014 – I HAD AN EARLIER NIGHT …

…than last night. In fact I was in bed by all of 04:00 would you believe? Carried awy again by some work that I was doing.

Even more surprisingly, having set the alarm for 07:30 this morning (we’re back at wrok as of today), I was awake – and wide awake too – before it even went off. I’ll probably pay for that later today but never mind.

I was quite busy during the night too. It was the week of beating the bounds in Wales where everyone has to walk – or run – around the borders of the country to satisfy themselves of the correct location of the markers. You could start at any time of the day that you liked, and I remember always starting at 10:20.

Sometime during the night I ended up in broad daylight in Birmingham (a city that I detest) with Zero. I on’t know why we had gone there but I was carrying a geren folder with all of her mother’s bankruptcy documents in there, as well as two rather large kitchen knives. Zero wanted an ice cream and a cake so we went into a cafe and while I was sorting her out, one of the serving staff picked up the folder and started to read the papers within. She then came over and asked us to leave
“Why on earth should we do that?” I asked
“Well, I’m afraid that you might use our premises to solicit donations from the large number of customers (there were about 4 in the cafe) who use or premises”.
She was surprisingly insistent, and even more surprisingly, made no reference to the two very large knives, and they were certainly large enough to frighten anyone.
I made a remark something along the lines of “the trouble with most people in Britain these days is that they are totally paranoid and immediately see things in a situation that simply aren’t there” but that cut no ice with her.

So now that I’m on summer hours, after breakfast I attacked the computer and restarted work on the website. That went on until midday when I knocked off the computer and ent outside to work.

I’ve promised 2 half-days on the garden each week and so I made a start on one of the raised beds, digging it over and weeding it, but I didn’t get far as I had to go to Cécile’s as there was a man due to come to check the septic tank. Accordingly I had a shower in the verandah (and we are talking about nothing to do with the Open University Students Association by the way) and then rounded up all of the washing from my holiday.

Once he had gone I came back via the Intermarche where I bumped into Jean Lauvergne and his wife and then when I was back here I had a couple more jobs to do on Caliburn. Firstly to change the passenger-side mirror. It was cracked quite a while ago but I caught in on something at Rennes-le-Chateau and that finished it off.

After that, I changed his tyres and he now has his summer tyres on. That took much longer than it should have – one of the wheels was rusted onto the hub and on another wheel the jack couldn’t find a good purchase. But anyway that’s sorted out and now Caliburn is ready for the summer.

buds on trees les guis virlet puy de dome franceI went back into the garden after and promptly broke the handle on the fork. It’s not my day is it.

But I did notice that some of the more sheltered trees and bushes are now budding. That’s early this year. It can only spell doom as I’m not quite convinced that winter is quite over yet, even if we did have over 25°C.

We also had 170 amp-hours of surplus electrical energy today. That might sound a lot but it isn’t as much as yesterday’s 205 amp-hours, which is about a record as far as I can tell. But there’s a reason for this. Now that the days are lengthening dramatically and the sun is much higher in the sky, I’ve started disconnecting the lights of the house in daytime and plugging the fridge in there instead. That way it runs through the day and the current doesn’t pass down the overcharge circuit, which is still running too hot for my liking.

I’ll have to do something about that.

Anyway now I’m off to bed. A nice clean me and nice clean bedding too. Luxury!

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