Tag Archives: plant fair

Thursday 26th May 2011 – I’ve been gardening today

herb garden trough les guis virlet puy de dome franceI need to as well as I have so many plants lying around that need to be planted before I go away.

I started on the herbs and they’ve now all been properly put in place. The troughs that I used at my apartment in Brussels for my hedge on the balcony – they are just the job for this. I’ve had to put the mint into a pot all on its own as it was going berserk and overwhelming everything else in the trough where it was.

There are just a few herbs remaining but they are in small pots in the cloche and aren’t really up to being planted out as yet.

unknown herb potager les guis virlet puy de dome franceBut I did find a plant that I didn’t recognise in the herb troughs. That, together with a couple of others that I can’t recognise, I’ve put on my Facebook page to see if anyone can identify them – you can see the link on the right-hand side.

If anyone has an idea as to what it (and the others) might be, let me know because I would love to find out what they are.

This afternoon I planted everything that I bought from the sale at St Gervais d’Auvergne, and there was tons of that too, and then made a start on the stuff growing in the cloche.

And so what with this morning on the computer again, this evening I went round to Marianne’s for a discussion and a perusal of the railway stuff that I received from Henri at Radio Tartasse about the tacot, the narrow-gauge railway that threaded its way through the Allier as far as Marcillat. And all of that is impressive too.

But basically Marianne and I have to go a-breaking and entering again, and we’ll do that when I come back from the UK.

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Sunday 22nd May 2011 – My Postilion has been struck by lightning

Well, actually my Livebox has been hit by lightning and until I can get a new one sent to me I have no internet connection and so I can’t keep my blog up-to-date “Hooray” … ed. And so how come I’m on the internet now? Actually, I’m at Liz and Terry’s making very kind use of their internet here.

Today, after working on the topic for our radio programmes next week (we will be talking about the Post Office) I went to the plant fair at St Gervais. This is where people sell their surplus garden plants to those whose crops have been wiped out by intemperate weather, and I now have some peppers, chilis, tomatoes, oregano, all kinds of stuff like that. There was even some natural soap for deep-cleaning the skin (I’ll need that when I finally start on the old cars that I have to restore) and some natural soap for dealing with stains on clothing.

fc psh fc pionsat st hilaire cellule puy de dome ligue football league franceAfter that I went to Cellule, near Davayat to watch Pionsat’s 1st XI get soundly spanked. After that, we watched a football match and FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s 1st XI were beaten 5-2.

But then again, playing with a back four of Lord Lucan, Martin Bormann and a couple of Easter Island statues it was hardly surprising. They were employing what I call the “Lego defence” – they all go to pieces in the box.

And now we have been rehearsing our radio programme for Tuesday – the morning it’s Radio Tartasse and in the afternoon it’s Radio Arverne.

Anyway, Liz wants her computer back and so I have to go. I don’t know when it might be that I’ll be on line again, but I’ll be back as soon as I can.

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Saturday 31st July 2010 – Tomorrow the world!

tryffid squash plant greenhouse les guis virlet puy de dome franceI can’t get into the greenhouse for the moment because this monster is in the way. It’s supposed to be a squash plant and it does indeed look as if it’s quite a squash in the greenhouse.

That’s especially the case seeing as yonder tryffid is being backed up by another one of its ilk as well as a rogue tomato seed that fell onto the floor and is now likewise threatening to take over the world. It’s quite impressive in there.

tomato plants mega cloche puy de dome franceI actually have piles of tomatoes ripening in the mega-cloche, as well as peppers and chili but these are the plants that I bought at the St Gervais d’Auvergne plant fair. The ones I planted aren’t doing much. The brassica are doing well but the one surviving pea plant has turned brown and died.

Elsewhere in the garden the beans are going berserk (especially those I planted the other day), the spuds have gone wild and the carrots are doing the biz. The onions are now swelling at long last and the garlic is dying off so that will be ready to lift in early course.

Today is Saturday and just for a change there was a brocante at St Priest les Champs. It’s not natural to have a brocante on a Saturday – it’s like your body clock is all wrong when you have other things to do. But not to worry – it’s Pionsat’s brocante tomorrow. I’m still looking for a milk churn, and Liz saw one at St Priest today and rang me up to tell me about it. I went round there chaud-pied, as they say around here to have a look but it was only 15 litres and that isn’t big enough.

I’m also after a car CD player so I can build a unit to play all of my CDs around the house, and that’s not as easy as it sounds either.

Nothing of any use at Carrefour or at Lidl so it’s been a bit of a non-day today. But they were selling tubs of sorbet at LIDL for €0.89 and they looked ever so enticing and after all it has been quite a while since I had an ice-cream …..

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Sunday 23rd May 2010 – It was the Garden Fair in St Gervais d’Auvergne today.

plant fair st gervais d'auvergne puy de dome franceThis is probably the most important day in the calendar out here in the Combrailles. The weather is, as you know, unpredictable and it can play havoc with your gardening as it has done this year with my plants. I’ve no leeks, no peppers, no chilis and so on.

But this area is the home of many people with a close affinity with the soil and so gardening, especially vegetable gardening, is quite a pastime.

And so at the Garden fair what happens is that everyone brings along their surplus plants and those of us who have been devastated by the late snows and frosts can buy them to replace those that we lost.

And so I duly bought a tray of 50 leeks, some peppers, some chilis, some mint and some decent-sized tomatoes. There was also a stall there manned (“personned” – ed) by a couple of kids full of insipid tomato plants and the like (the stall, not the kids) and they were quite intelligent and interesting (the kids, not the plants). We had quite a chat and some banter and I bought a handful of plants from them for no good reason at all except that I liked the kids. I reckon I get on much better with kids rather than adults. They don’t have any preconceptions and have the same kind of weird sense of humour that I have.

folk dance st gervais d'auvergne puy de dome franceThat wasn’t all of the entertainment either. We had some folk-dancing too – a little team of locals giving some kind of demonstration of their art and grabbing hold of passing locals and pulling them onto the stage.

And it’s good to see all of these younger people taking part too. There’s a huge amount of local culture that has been lost due to no-one following on in the footsteps of the older generation and that’s a tragedy.

But that was all in mid-afternoon.

It was Sunday today of course so that meant a lie-in for the morning. And after breakfast I had to write the script for the radio programmes for the month of June.

Yes, we start with the information for the week commencing 4th June and so I am bewildered as to why the person who gives us the stuff to broadcast (which I have to translate into English and work into a script) and who was b*ll*ck*d by me the other week for giving me stuff too late to include in the relevant programmes back then, has sent me all the information (“which we MUST broadcast”) about submitting your income tax returns – final date for submission being … errrr …. 31st May!

All I can say is that it’s no wonder that the French Civil Service is in total chaos.

After St Gervais d’Auvergne I went round to Liz and Terry’s to discuss the programmes and for a chat, and then I came home early to plant my vegetables. After all, tomorrow is yet another Bank Holiday and so it’s a lie-in in the morning and in the afternoon I’m going for a guided walk around some old quarries.

Yes, I really ought to get out more often, don’t I?

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