isn’t that amazing.

Yesterday afternoon we started to prepare for our belated bonfire party and frankly it felt more like setting up for a summer BBQ. We were working in shirtsleeves and I could not help but stop and marvel at the quality of light and how everything in the garden still looked vibrant.  Our guests were due to arrive at 7:30 and as we sat out just us two in the warm November breeze clutching a cup of mulled cider, I suggested Mike light the fire so that we don’t have a mad panic with out of control furnace and a crowd of people standing around watching me running about clutching fire blankets and extinguishers which actually is the norm for me when Mike decides to light any size of bon fire

Graham and Ann arrived with a swanky dressed Guy fawkes and I heard Mike comment that the guy was better dressed than him. We waited for our token children guests  to turn up before we pulled Graham off BBQ duties and then onto guy burning duties. You can see that the fire was well down already I think my out of control fire phobia had taken it’s toll but our friends understood where I was coming from and I think I was forgiven for not have a roaring and frankly ridiculous fire to step back from in fear of  being frazzled.

We tried to keep things really simple and opted  for the traditional French feast of sausage in a baguette, lots of nibbles my special mulled cider and lashings of wine. You can see that  despite putting out loads of seating we all bunched together in a huddle around the bar and food table chatting and listening to cassettes of old French crooning music. At the appropriate time Mike set off with the Oakes lads to set off the fireworks which at great expense was a loud and bright display that only lasted for fifty four seconds. Good thing really as I had not paid attention to HOSS who ran to me when they set off  lay on the ground and barked like a possessed hound , I won’t be doing that again.....

When some of the guests went home those left decanted to the kitchen to warm  up on coffee, cake and when Mike opened our treasure trove of a drinks cabinet the whole event kicked up a few notches and we sat around my beloved table both French and English laughing and making mad conversation until the wee hours. Two in the morning to be precise, and then Mike and I went back up into the garden to bring back all the left overs. I sat out watching over the remains of the fire and in wonder of this fabulous November weather. We have had the proverbial duvet day today and I have just taken HOSS for his last walk and scraped over the fire only to see that after 24 hours it is still alight and giving off heat…isn’t that amazing.

we were snowed in.

Gardening is a great pastime, relaxing, good exercise, exciting and amazing, but today it was also sad. Today, we had to cut down the row of conifers we have been growing since 2006, and for all of you who know your dates, yes, we had these trees before we even came to Brevands. They arrived on the removal lorry in pots stacked up amongst the fridge and washing machine so  I did feel a little guilty and sad but once Mike had sawed them down I was excited with the actuality of a clear view into the allotment and the prospect of the land handed back to me being full of flowers and stuff we might eat. Mike is on light duties so we will have to wait to load this huge pile of tree into the trailer but I have the land back and I can now start planning my 2012 veggie patch 

The chickens have settled well into the pottager and I am training them to come to me when I want them back in the enclosure. They are clearing the autumn leftovers and feeding themselves so we don’t have to. I am not going to grow outside of the poly in the pottager so anything there is for them to forage. I always wanted to shout “come on chicky chic chics, come on” and have them respond so I am thrilled that when I go clucking about in  there  they come for  a handful of corn and then I trick them into the enclosure to shut the gate on them. Luckily hens have a very short memory and the trick of shutting them in is a constant surprise to them ……the power I have over those hens is intoxicating

Mike came up into the allotment last week with a bit of a face on and said “ good news or bad news,  I demanded the bad news first, Your duck is dead, “so what is the good news”…one less duck to feed and the reality of living with the wild and untamed was accepted, The duck was a female dressed as a male, blind in one eye and as old as the time we have been here, so her time was up and as we had only borrowed her from mother nature we  said our goodbyes and threw her into the hedge row for nature and all she looks after to  make use of her and close the cycle. We dispose of all our passing visitors that way, it makes sense  and feels right, from where we are here in the middle of it all.

I will not explain this picture but the autumn pumpkins in the back ground will give it away. Daffs in November…..absolutely ridiculous…but quite inexplicably exciting, We are all waiting to see what  winter has got in her plan for us. I am however, reminded that in three weeks time last year, we were snowed in. 

UK shopping list for next time…!!

What’s going on in the Kitchen……Eric and Gill came for the weekend from Port Solent and as we were invited to a Halloween Party it was time to step up to the plate and make use of those abundant pumpkins from the garden

We made three and we sent one to Marianne and Ray’s to prepare for their ghoulish party. I promised to make an aperitif dip and at the last moment I had to ring my Mum to remind me what needed to be done but I can’t tell you or I will have to kill you, it is now a very closely guarded secret, only Ann and I  know about it over here in France.

I have a very strict rule about fancy dress, OK, go ahead and play along but don’t go Ugly so Mike went in his tuxedo, nearly Dracula, and I just hung fluorescent skeletons from my earrings, not too ugly then. The rest of the guests came looking ugly, scary and I don’t know how I slept that night. I got a mail from my mate Shirley who wrote “dear funny fanny and James….It took me a minute to decipher the code but she was referring to us, arriving all  suave 007 and fab and them looking like they had just fallen off  Jackson’s Thriller film set.

As always our visits are over and it is time to send our guests home, Eric and Gill were one of our first visitors four years ago and although we have seen each other every year in other places we were pleased to welcome them here and what a difference they have seen. There was lots of ohhing and ahhing and you all know how much I love that!!

And lastly…Mike needed to buy a halogen light bulb for his spot lamp. We are planning our bonfire party and he wanted to light up the Willow tree and throw some atmosphere about. We looked on the Internet and found a company in the UK who sold them for £1.67 but would not post them because they are delicate. I then went on the hunt here in France and, WOW, I found a supplier in St Lo, only problem is, they cost  16€   …HOW CAN THAT BE…..so it’s halogen bulbs  on the UK shopping list for next time…!!

look forward to doing all again soon….

We took a trip across the channel to be part of a huge conspiratorial event that worked a treat. There’s Mim thinking she was going out for a quiet tête-à-tête dinner with Dick to celebrate her 60^th birthday and there we were, her complete set of siblings,  their partners,  her children and our Mum all sat at the table for two with great expectation of  birthday party celebrations. Needless to say Mim was speechless and then in the middle of it all made a lovely speech forgiving us all for telling lies  and making her think no one was  able to join her on her special day. I did not lie to her however, as I e-mailed to say we were going to the boat for the weekend but did not specify which boat, and we drove onto the Brittany Ferries boat with no guilt or bad feeling…Mike and I had a great weekend just doing family things and  a trip to Wicks to buy my birthday prezzie. I know you are asking yourself what would a woman of that certain age want for her birthday from Wicks…well I needed a new wheel barrow and I am going to call it Bara cause everything deserves a name.

Billy and Maxine were having dinner so we went along to see where the new love nest is. What a delight to see happiness oozing out of every moment those two are together.   We had a lovely meal and then drank the 40 40 40 liqueur  from the recipe that they persuaded my friend Ann to part with when  they were here in September. I must say it was rather good and I am tempted to make a bottle myself, but I still have a litre of slow gin to down so perhaps I will leave it until next year.

Chris and Sam came up from Southampton to see us so we made that into a family gathering too. Both Grand Mothers  there to oooh and aaah  at their little  boy. I gave Chris his part of the memory box hand out and he now owns his Cub cap and jumper, school reports, pictures of his sisters when they were little and a whole load of stuff that I kept for him to enjoy on this day. What a treat. I have promised to share all this memoirs stuff and it gives me so much pleasure.

Then it is all over, we pose for the pictures and all go home but thank goodness we do pose because this is the stuff for sharing. We had a great weekend away, enjoyed the company of our families and look forward to doing all again soon….

.Happy Birthday Mum.

Last year we converted our little duck egg blue cuissiniere from wood to coal. Sounds complicated, but not.  When we hauled her out of a barn covered in dust we saw that she came with a coal conversion kit in terms of plates and doors that slide into the wood burning box and when we decided that we could no longer keep her alight on little bits of wood we bought a bag of coal.  Our lives were transformed in terms of paying homage and falling to our knees in front of our kitchen heat source every time we forgot to shove another block of wood in. The coal burns longer and is much more forgiving if you forget to pay her a visit. This Summer we started to look for a reliable source of coal, cheap and in huge quantities and hit lucky after a plea for help  on the Anglo Info site which we expats moan about for it’s unbelievable moronic  following at times but always turn to when we need help. Gary and Rachel came to our help and said that they had a ton spare out of their prepaid co-operative and would be happy to sell us a ton with a view to us joining the club next year. Gary arrived bristling with muscle to shovel our ton into our coal stash. This coal is  off the coalface coal and Gary promised that we will never want to burn anything else when we see the economics and cleanness of this type of coal. So the fire is lit and in six days of day and night heat we have used just one buckets worth and we are not only warm and snug and cooking already, but smiley and smug that we just may have found the solution to what will be an annual problem…how to keep warm on the cheap.

It is that time of year again, and we five fell to our knees in Jacqueline’s orchard to pick up this huge pile of apples for the cider year of 2011. Jacqueline had to go away to Paris to see her children and I was put in charge of the baskets and bags and keeping count of the apples we put on the pile. We found it very hard this year firstly the joy of working with Jacqueline is no longer there as she has disappeared for the second year running now and hard because we are not getting any younger and if you are not bending, lifting and generally acting like farmers all year the two days that you enthusiastically devote to apple picking is hard, painful and after six hours starts to feel futile and the taste of the nectar of life in the guise of rough old cider starts to wear a little thin.  We did what was necessary and finished off in our orchard to add our apples to the pile.  We actually picked on my birthday yesterday so that we could be sure to beat any bad weather. We all knew that feeling the way we did a wet or cold day would just finish us off.

I did however have a good birthday and came home to a barrage of best wishes and love on face book and email. My pile of cards was more than I deserved and a line of love running long the length of the mantle piece is just great.  I spoke to Australia, Canada and Southampton and that gave me the greatest of pleasure that my kids are there, and for one moment in time all thinking the same thing….Happy Birthday Mum.

why would you make green tomato jam…….!

We are off on the next project , and I have named this patch, Hens Terrace. Every cultivated or worked part of the garden has a name and as top terrace is already taken it seems fitting that we pay homage to the sacrifice my little girls and their noble cockerel have made to allow me to sit and eat with a view of the garden. As I mentioned in the last blog we are going to hold our bon fire party here and I have a pile of recycled paper bricks to burn and it appears an enthusiastic gang of mates prepared to face the cold and join us in this very British landmark celebration. I intend to eat and drink far too much and toast my toes on a bonfire till it is too cold to stay out and you can bet your bottom dollar that by the 5^th of November it will be freezing.

We were going to put the van terraces and this Hens terrace  on hold for a while as we are short of dosh. We need a good lorry load of gravel to make the concrete but we emptied our jewellery box of broken rings and knotted chains today and took them to a gold buying day in Isigny-sur-mer and managed to sell enough to go a long way toward the gravel we need  and a few bags of cement, so, game on. As soon as the fire is dowsed the concrete laying begins, that’s if the frost keeps at bay because we all know that concrete does not set in frosty weather…well, we did all know that didn’t we!

I have been in a crazy propagation mode these past few weeks and have been tending these delicate little fragments of plant waiting and watching for signs of life and yesterday I lined up all my little babies that have been potted up and I am going to have a great selection of stock plants to cheer up the beds next spring. 

 

These are in the getting wet stage, just potted up from the dodgy life and death phase. Once they get to this size and are happy to sit in their own pots then you have plants, and when you look at the result of only a few hours of not very hard or taxing work it all makes perfect sense and is wildly satisfying.

I picked the last of the tomatoes and made my 66^th jar of passata for this winter. The issue here is that I still have 33 jars from last year and as they are bottled are still good.  I had a basket of tomatoes looking at me on my kitchen counter for three days and I couldn’t find the courage to make another batch but my friend Anna turned up unexpectedly so I chucked them in a bag and sent her home with strict instructions to make passata with no need to share as has been her habit in the past. The tomato plants are now lifted and the tunnel is bare except for the winter crop of  maturing cuttings and the odd lettuce which I will try to keep going until winter forbids any more growth.  Last year I tried to make green tomato jam but frankly when you have twenty jars of the most delicious strawberry and black current jams why would you make green tomato jam…….!

Perfect, and I can’t wait

Just in case you were worried, I thought I would let you know that the chic-e-chicks are just fine in their new home. We have taken a lot of time to settle them in with all the knowledge we have gained over the past four years of keeping hens. One of our little secrets is to create a border of boulders so they can’t scratch their way out under the fence. Chickens are great escape artists and we have both double checked all possible exit plans and are quite sure they are secure. Whilst giving HOSS his Sunday run at the sea side  today we also stole sand and shell off our beach to put in the sand pit so short of a bit of grass they are, sorted. It did occur to me this morning as I lay in bed listening to the crooning tones of a our young cockerel that he is now much closer to our bedroom window so panic attacks at the sight of the alarm clock reading nine in the morning are all a thing of the past, probably a good thing. I have often thought about why a cockerel crows whilst it is still dark and Mike and I have, quite sadly, pondered the quandary and my favourite notion is that a cockerel in the deep south of France wakes up to the sun and his call starts them all off up and across the nation until it reaches us before the sun has actually risen. We have another notion about churches in France. Every village has a church and we have wondered where in France you could possibly be the furthest from a church. I recon you could  climb up to the top of every church tower in France and see the next one, it is on our walks on the beach that we start this talk of notions and theory but at least we are chatting and at least we are still capable of a notion or two.

So now the work begins on the new patio. Mike lifted some fence posts that were in place before we came and scoffed and poo poo’d the quality of the installation with remarks like “ how was that little amount of concrete going to keep a fence post up…..well it did, and has for as long as we have been here. Mike then needed to lift two posts that he had installed a couple of years ago and by ‘eck we were there for the morning digging and pushing and pulling  before the post gave way with a chunk of concrete that we could have built a house with. To be faire to Mike he did mention that he may have gone over board but I praise his belts and braces approach to anything he does and that is why stuff stays in place and we rarely get a fall-over disaster to deal with.

If you are a long term blogger you will know that we bought a pallet of coping stones a couple of years ago and have used them to make the surround to the Boule park and made paths and stuff around the garden. Today, however,  we decided that we had enough left to make a boarder around our new patio so all we now have to find is the dosh to buy a lorry full of gravel to finish the job. I love the way one job leads onto the next, we need gravel to finish the mobile home terraces and now we have the patio to do, so a lorry load will be plenty and more economical. We are having a bon fire party here on the 5^th of November and I had decided that I wanted a fire in the garden but Mike was unsure about having people grovelling about in the dark and suggested a oil drum fire on the drive…I was not excited about that  but yesterday he announced that we could have a fire on the space that will be the new patio. There is light, space and it is closer to the house, ………Perfect, and I can’t wait