Men in camouflage will never get to know.

Another week starts and I was happy to have the excuse to stay close to the house. The lorry delivering the new sized gravel was due late morning or early afternoon but in either case the driver was due to call us to get final directions and we have learnt that you need to be there and have your directions ready. I am seriously challenged with my language skills every time but living where we do other peoples lovely’s do not always find us so the well rehearsed patter of how to find us is a must. So there I was, happy to potter around the house when the call came mid morning and the lorry was in Catz, we therefore had only a few minutes to get a flag up to show which gate to stop at, grab the cheque book because amazingly you pay the driver and we set off up the garden. When you are retired and on a project an event like this is quite exciting, please don’t be sad for us, we really quite enjoy it, no pressure and no long hours but achieving and happy.

We spent the rest of the day on the ongoing quest to move as much of the wrong sized gravel and we also lifted the membrane which we stupidly laid when building the car park last year. We now know it was a BIG mistake and big mistakes have to be put right and  before we have the parking area in constant use with holiday makers. Positive thinking never did anyone any harm.

Second job of the day was to deport a rabbit we caught in our humane rabbit trap. We have re-homed about ten rabbits since we have been setting the trap about two years ago but have also caught hedghogs and my cat chose to be curious and spent a very embarrassing night locked up. It was HOSS who made a be-line to her side to alert me to the fact that "the cat was in the trap” but I had to go back to the house to get my camera before I let her out.  Once we have a rabbit we get into the car and transport it to another field. We are extremely neighbourly and have ear marked places where there are no other gardens and I feel good and very wholesome as we let the little blighters free and give them a second chance at life.  We were having lunch with Jacqueline our elderly lady of the land friend who threw her hands up in horror at our humane approach to rabbits and she warned us not to tell too many people in the village about our trap or we may get the local chase on our backs for moving their prey. I must confess to laughing with her as I honestly thought she was pulling my leg but she was very serious and so I only tell non chase people about our Free Willy procedure and hope our local men in camouflage will never get to know.

Get on with my life.

 

Mike and I are sat on our home-made bench.  The picture, though not perfectly composed as I look like a barrage balloon caught saying something like, nerd, does mark a moment for us as this bench has been two years in the making and is now as complete as it ever will be.  Anna and William came over for afternoon tea as we were putting the final bolts in and we all took turns and had our picture taken at this most auspicious moment

We have had a few good days in which we have been able to apply more weed killer on the allotment. The seedlings in the potting shed are now being given names and should really be out within the next week or so but the ground is just not ready. Our philosophy these days in the idyllic and calm environment we live in is akin to a Mexican farmer  with a manyana at the beginning and at the end of each crisis, but I know it will all get done but not perhaps at pace we should be at.

I made a call late last night to a couple selling on 'le bon coin' and negotiated a “don’t sell this before we get there “ deal for a garden table, two benches and two chairs in teak for forty euros. I need not have worried about loosing the deal though as we set off with an eleven o’clock deadline I imagined that the queue of people after us would be immense and timing would be crucial. We arrived thanks to Lovely a half an hour before deadline and as we could not park in front of the house we left the car and trailer around the corner and walked to the house. I had hoped to get the business done early but all the  shutters were up and there was no sign of life so we walked the dog to the nearest patisserie for some breakfast and became acutely  aware that we were in the suburbs of Caen lost in a warren of tiny houses with no parking and no gardens. We are unaware, living as we do, that life in our local towns could be a million miles from where we are in terms of standards and expectation. There was evidence all around us that this was once a small village with a stone wall surrounding a modern carbuncle of a

library next to a barn wall lost in it’s modern predicament. There was a huge stone building with a row of barn doors on the first floor and we wondered what huge and influential crop or activity happened here in the past. Today it had lost all it’s pride and purpose as it argued and protested for its history next to an estate of little boxes and a high rise apartment block where once were green fields and people’s lives. We got back to the house and at eleven o’clock I knocked and knocked again and finally a woman came to the door and showed us to the ‘salon de jardin’ in their postage stamp of a garden. This story is a  story enough to tell you but the shock of walking into a chaotic household took my breath away and I have to carry on. This home was only ten or so years old but oh how the other half live. There was evidence of little girls living there as the washing hanging in the kitchen  was  full of little pink socks and vests and I pondered a reflective fear for this young and vulnerable  life never achieving the joys of making a beautiful home no matter how hard up they might be. They are unlikely to even have pride in their possessions and how are they to be organised and enjoy the ambiences  of a clean and tidy home being brought up in this chaos,  and that just made me sad. We carted the salon out through the house, paid up and left. I tried to make conversation saying how great le bon coin was but the woman just grunted kindly at me and closed the door. We will never have to go there again but this was an open window into life, as we don’t know it, and it makes me angry and frustrated that nothing can be said or done.  Mike and I discussed what we had seen then set off home to our little bit of paradise wishing we could have waved a magic wand to make everything better. On reflection though, I hope as I pull my fluffy warm covers over my head tonight that this little family know how to love and laugh around the table, but then again we had just bought the table so I will just pull the covers over my head and get on with my life.

And for that we are deeply sorry.

I spent time in the poly this afternoon after a whistle stop 200 kilometre round trip to the other end of the Manche to look at a tractor that, after all that, is no good. It occurred to us both as we meandered our way home ignoring all of Lovely’s suggestions for a quick and easy route home that had Mike been able to discuss the tractor’s age and type on the phone he might have guessed it was going to be wrong for us but then we would not have had such a lovely ride out and had time to talk about our plans. I consider the car as our board room as we get many ideas thrashed out and the seeds of a plan are sewn during a journey as we had today. So after our ride out I set off to the poly tunnel  to pot up my lavender. In September and October last year as I collected seeds from anything that had seeds, and also took cuttings of anything that looked like a potential success , I dutifully poked them into pots of sandy soil and then left them in the poly for the winter to make roots, and they all have. I potted up forty lavender that I will now leave in pots but outside until this time next year and then they will become my fragrant garden at wind break corner. Isn’t it great to have a year plan.  Yesterday I went through my hedge plants that we propagated in November 2009 and I have seventy privet and forty box so we can now start making  hedging plans.   
   

I am waiting for the frost to be less of a threat  before setting out my sweet peas for this year,  they are growing like mad and here I am in mid March with my vest on in 60 degrees pottering about, no pun intended. Can’t say that glamorous gardener comes to mind looking at the state of me here.  I do tend to strip off in the heat re-clip my hair several times, get mud all over my face and there is the result.

Last night I started the dodgy task of putting Beema on the market. I put her on as many free sites as I could find and then this morning I got a mail from an agent in St Malo who would like to see her with the view to selling her for us, for a fee of cause.  I must say that Mike is taking this all very well but I feel that I am treading on egg shells as I arrange meetings and fill in forms but he knows and I know that if we want to stay here in Brevands she has to go and for that we are deeply sorry.

Heaven forbid.

 It’s warm and nine degrees is enough to get out in the garden, it’s enough to walk and breath in the air and it is most definitely enough to shovel gravel and get so hot you need to take off your top layer of jumpers. Mike bought me this thermometer for Christmas and I really enjoy clocking our climate as I pass by the cart at the front of the house. The sky has been clear and blue today, full of promise of warm summer days lasting way into the evening and I for one can’t wait. It is however, still only March and we must stop willing the winter over  because it actually still has a purpose and one of them is to give us the time to get our bare rooted fruit  trees transplanted before they start to wake up. Yesterday we went to the local pepiniere open day and took up their offer of six fruit trees for thirty five euros. The man selling was full of good advice and promised that these trees would bear good strong fruit and I believe him, why wouldn’t I ?  Mike and I discussed the pros and cons of yet another expenditure but agreed it was a small price to pay to finish off the orchard so, as they say, we went for it. The pepiniere then got his secateurs out and started to hack the trees to within an inch of their lives. I mentioned that the English are very sensitive about pruning too hard and he just said we should not be afraid and kept hacking. So there we have it in nine degrees of winter warmth we planted the last six trees in the orchard bringing the audit to nine apple, four pear, three plum and two walnut and in five years time we hope to be a couple of happy fruit pickers and that really is something to look forward to.

Whilst digging Mike clunked his spade against something metal in the hole and dug out this horse shoe. What a fabulous find because we can only imagine that it would have fallen off the horse in the middle of a ploughing pass. We have found a few shoe dumps around the barn area and presume the farrier just buried them to clear the decks  but one on it’s own in the middle of the field, now my orchard, does conjure up the possibilities of the horse de-shoeing himself and the farmer going home in a rage and having to call in the farrier to get his beast back to work. Life must have been as stressful then as it can be now only we get fired up about the Butagaz man and banks that don’t trust each other. So there you have it, a little bit of history at the turn of a spade. Mike did mention that if we find another shoe we stop digging, and it took me a couple of moments to compute his ponderings,  six foot down and a posy of flowers left by a tearful  farmer walking back to his homestead was the image that came to mind, heaven forbid.

Frustrating isn’t it.

Both Mike and I are stiff and hurting, it is not just a specific muscle it is a complete body ache and to complicate things a little we didn’t get to bed much before two in the morning and I am still trying to justify why, if it slows us down this much the next day.  We are urgently waiting for a Euro transfer into the bank, it is like the old days waiting to get paid and hoping your employer had remembered to put your wage slips through the system, We had the Butagaz tanker turn up unannounced last week and I allowed him to fill our tank knowing we didn’t have enough to pay him straight away so I called the loosely named, help line, and  asked for an extension on the payment and they agreed to wait until the fifteenth of the month so we went to the UK had a great time and came back to a very red bank account and a customer services call to say that they were ever so sorry but they took the money anyway. My French transforms into smooth intelligent fast and eloquent patois of my own when I am fired up and although they have promised to put a five day pay delay on our next delivery I have told them that I will turn the lorry away if they don’t give me ten days notice that they are coming. All that was very boring so here is something very exciting,  I planted a box of box today.

 We took hedge cuttings in November 2009 and here they are all confused and shoved together in pots for the winter on the hot bed in the potting shed. The process after that is to re-pot each cutting into it’s own pot  six months later and leave to develop a root system in the sunshine. I had this precious product of mine lined up along the side of the poly tunnel all summer and decided to move them to the gravel on the drive a week before the snow came in 2010 and with the avalanche of white stuff falling off the tunnel I would most certainly have lost the lot, 100 meters of hedge, lost. Today though, I took 12 of the best and planted them close together so that this time next year I will be able to trim them into a box shape. Mike suggested I could trim them into a wedge shape but a wedge of box does not sound as incredible as a box of box

This is the view from the kitchen window of one of our mobile homes. The JCB man is due on the 23^rd and we still have all that gravel to move but I am so excited about the whole project. My mate in the village called by to see if they might be ready for August as she has a friend who wants to spend his holiday here in Brevands, I was a little shruggy shouldered over her enquiry because we have no news from the water board or the electric people and our applications went in over a month ago, so slow response and noncommittal was the only way I could deal with her request….. frustrating isn’t it.

Fantastic isn’t it…..

The big dig has started and Mike and I are shovelling thirty minutes at a time to dig out this ten tons of wrong sized gravel to have it replaced with ten tons of the right sized gravel, and although this is a tough and non motivational task we know it is for the long term good and we will pat ourselves on the back when the job is done. One of the more exciting outcomes of the great gravel move is that we have taken the opportunity to top up in other gardens where we laid a little thin at the time and the wood garden and poly tunnel terrace have benefited from an extra couches. Whilst we were at the wood garden we moved the potting shed pots and relocated our concrete bench to give us a better view  point.

 Whenever we move things about I allow myself the luxury of taking my time to make sure that whatever we are doing is right. Design on this spontaneous level can be a bit like being on a roller coaster, it is a great thrill whilst you are there in motion but when you stop you suddenly realise you may have made a mistake. We have

had to unravel many an error and the gravel move is living proof that we all make mistakes and you have to be gracious in the revamp activities as they present themselves. I therefore stand back and contemplate the decision whenever I can and you can see that Mike is prone to take the opportunity to put his feet up because this could take some time and will inevitably incur extra work.

I finally got around to clearing out the brussel sprout patch motivated by the fact that some of this seasons plants  are already seedlings in the potting shed.  We have cauliflower, broad bean and peas at identifiable stage showing signs of having a personality and already the sweet peas are almost adult and the sunflowers and screaming to be let out. Patience is the true virtue of the gardener and as I am still such a novice and still lacking the calm approach of weather forecasting and understanding why the moon should be in the last quadrant on the cusp of the new phase, what ever that might mean. I just want my plants out in the sunshine and for that we need to prepare the earth, count the days, calculate the frost threat and absolutely                                                                                                          don’t plant out before the end of April, so I have a long two months of seedling care and potting on before we can proceed with this seasons planting. The Hens are on a gastronomic stint as we deposit all the left overs for them to triage and peck over then once they have finish it’s into the compost heap and the whole cycle starts again, fantastic isn’t it…..

Sound daft?,….. you got it,….. it is barmy.

Birthdays can be something or nothing and we all hanker for a blistering event which in reality probably fizzes out by breakfast with the prospect that it may rally as the postman hesitates outside the house just before lunch.  This weekend my Mum had her 85^th birthday carved in stone and written in the starry sky with a day of celebration she will be proud to remember as a testament of her love and devotion to her six children and their families. Mike and I took that terminally boring channel crossing to be with her and had the honourable status of, distant relative on a visit, making catching-up so much more fun. We both felt, as always, that we are part of something far bigger than us being part of a big family that has love at the hub

my son Chris, my brother in law Geoff, and my husband Mike...... all Bakers

Although this was a “Field “ generated event it was touching to see that the Baker boys still stand at the same height and if you look closely there is a strong resemblance and that constantly makes me a little giddy as to how often that happens, my cousin Jo once commented that I laugh just like her Mum and that shoots me off on a journey following my dad’s blood lines but if you stand me next to my Mum I am undoubtedly made in her image, and as long as I keep her strength and positive outlook on life then I am happy with that. 

A family visit  is all too soon over and  it is time to go home  but we had a great weekend and Mim and Dick were the best B&B in town.

We picked up our friends John and Linda who got a lift back with us and are spending a few days here in Brevands. The journey home was made all the more less boring by sharing it with friends and the time slipped by so before we knew it we were tucked up in your lovely warm beds ready for the next adventure. I saw my Mum on Skype yesterday and she is still on the ceiling and in true 85year old style is partying on regardless. Thank you to my brothers and sisters for organising a great weekend and I am now on that confounded diet preparing for the next family event in April.

Today, despite the soft condition of the field, we moved one of our mobile  homes out of the JCB working zone. It is now  where it can be pushed into it’s permanent place when the work is done. John and Linda were there to make this a group task and it went well and we now have to move 10 tons of gravel to somewhere else to make room for another 15 tons of a different grade of gravel, sound daft?,….. you got it,….. it is barmy.