Last Night

Walked down to the cottage in the dark between great fat splodges of rain.

The waning moon was pink.

Twenty-nine Degrees Celsius...

... in the swimming pool this evening; the water just warmed by the heat of the sun over the last few days.  That's eighty-four degrees Fahrenheit.  That's hot!

And only a week ago we had the fire lit!

I laze on my back in the water and watch an anvil thunder cloud build on the western horizon, outlined by the setting sun.  Monsieur F has just started the water canon swishing in the maize field alongside our pool. He, at least, is not relying on the forecast of rain tonight.  Though our neighbour two fields in the other direction is harvesting his wheat, just in case.  No doubt the distant rumble of the combine (if not thunder) will go long into the night

Vita greets me at one end of the pool, licking the slightly salty water off my arms as I hang on the side.  We both think this new system is a great improvement on the old chlorine tablets.

I climb out and turn to see a grasshopper jump in - legs splayed on the water. I drop back in to rescue him and it's like getting into a warm bath. 

Maybe I'll swim just a little longer.

Just an Ordinary Day

Eat sour cherries straight off the tree for breakfast.

Somehow move tractor from middle of field where it's stubbornly stuck.

Attach wisteria to new wire along side of house, as old wire was cut by the builders when they put in the kitchen window.  (Would have been much easier to do before all the leaves came out.)

Recover Kong which Vita expertly threw into the underground drain pipe that runs the length of the garage. Then cover drain pipe so she can't do it again.

(Maybe) unpack another box and decide where all the contents go.

Make houmous because there was none in Leclerc's at lunchtime.  And anyway homemade is much better.

Bring cookery books up from the cottage.  Or maybe only the book with the houmous recipe.

Choose and eat ice cream.

Watch Brazil play Portugal (bad-temperedly).

Go for a swim.

Tomorrow is the Summer Solstice

At least the sun has shone today. (Better than yesterday's downpours.  In the evening we fed friends beef and Guinness stew in the warmth of the kitchen, seemed appropriate given the weather.) 

There's been a biting wind from the north all day and tonight's temperature is dropping to 6°C.  We've dragged the bougainvillea in its large pot into the house.  Its soft new bronze leaves won't cope with the wind chill.

We've lit the stove in the lounge and the house smells of wood smoke.

We huddle on the sofa to watch Dr Who and then Brazil play football and finish yesterday's stew.

Afternoon sun on the pool house

Vita in front of the fire

And this time last year ...

Almost Midsummer

The Joys of a Cool Wet June

The roses last much longer and even when weather-blown are still beautiful.

Ooooff

We're back in the house and have been so for a couple of weeks.

To begin with, I was too busy to post, then had too much to say. So I walked round carrying ideas for posts in my head, started to jot some down, but gave up in disgust.

I thought moving would be easier this time. (After all, it's the third time in three years - England to France, house to cottage, now cottage back to house - we've had plenty of practice.) But it wasn't.

So I grumped at Tod, Vita and friends. Tod cooked. Vita barked. Friends helped clean, repair and paint walls and got little thanks for it. Tod came up in itchy bumps when scraping paint off our old lime walls and finished at A&E on a drip. Banned by the doctor from working in the house he stood on the veranda and wax coated all eight of our new doors. How on earth did we finish up with eight?

I crawled over the pine lounge floor tinting and waxing it a deep oak colour. For a brief evening after Tod polished it (by then he was ignoring the doctor's ban) the floor looked beautiful. Builders' mess was everywhere. Each cobweb hanging from our impossibly high ceiling in our new entrance hall (ex gîte / apartment / whatever) was a small hammock of sawdust. We thought we would just finish painting and cleaning in time, then the removals men said they were bringing our furniture out of store a day early. So I grumped and Tod cooked. Vita barked. And it rained.

The removals men brought the heavy stuff up from the cottage and we foolishly said we'd do the rest. It's a long way down and back when it's the tenth journey and not yet lunchtime. And all my papers and books sat in sad piles in the cottage waiting to be moved among the bed fluff and dust . And it rained and was cold. And I grumped some more and stayed down in the warm cottage late at night watching old movies. And Tod cooked. And Vita wondered where she lived and barked.

Dirty wood from the dismantled kitchen units lay on the veranda and old doors and shutters stood stacked against the house walls. Empty cartons piled up in the garage and tools were in the cottage when we needed them in the house and in the house when we needed them in the cottage - or in neither place because they had crept into the garage. And my papers and books were in sad piles in my study which had no shelves and hadn't yet been cleaned. And I had a fight with the Ikea system I'd lovingly brought from England and planned to use in my super new walk-in wardrobe. So in temper I threw it away and went to Bordeaux and tramped round two Leroy Merlins, Conforama, Castorama and Ikea, while Tod cooked and rescued the shelving system.

And then, gradually, I stopped grumping. My shelving went up and my computer came back to my study. A Castorama system holds all my clothes (summer and winter) in my wardrobe. We've moved the wood and the doors from the veranda, books are in bookcases, the television's in its new corner in the lounge alongside the open colombage that we backlight in the evenings. We've made trips to the communal tip and found secondhand oak chairs and a coffee table in the local Troc. We linger over meals in our bright, modern kitchen. I've planted troughs with geraniums and Tod's polished the long oak table on the veranda.

We finally feel at home again and we've invited friends to supper.

Waxing the lounge floor