The Table on the Terrace is too Small

 Bravely, we are having friends round for a barbeque - our first meal together in more than eighteen months.

The cottage is immaculate - our latest guests have left it pristine - and seems to be the obvious place to entertain since our house is a dust and cobweb-laden mess. And it means we can enjoy the cottage surroundings for ourselves, for a change.

But the table, under the "tonnelle" (what does one call it in English?  Awning? Arbour? Pergola? Marquee?  None of these words seem quite right for the large metal frame covered in grey curtaining that affords our guests shade) feels too small.

Social distancing for me is at least two metres - not the measly one here in France and even that, barely observed.  There cannot be two metres between us on that table.  I contemplate bringing the table down from the house that is piled with Annie Sloan paints, paint brushes, old rags and knickknacks waiting to be painted and my heart sinks at the thought.  Then Tod suggests two bridge tables - result!

The terrace table becomes the buffet - divided down the middle - to the right, their salads, to the left ours.  The two bridge tables, protected with tasteful textured plastic tablecloths, sit on opposite sides of the tonnelle, well socially distanced but still within chatting range.  

Our gossip is old and familiar, the months of COVID groundhog days offer no new news, but it doesn't matter, we are together and the warm evening brings a mellow contentment.

I thought ...

 ... I was going to have to post yet another blog about the weather - since that seems to be the only topic of conversation at the moment - too cold / too hot / too windy / too dry.  Enough to say, it became too hot and is now cooler again, to the relief of our latest set of guests.

But no - this is not a post about the weather, but a post about our wildlife - one in particular - a red squirrel.

We know red squirrels are in this part of the world having seen them occasionally take their lives into their hands and scamper across the main road into town.  They are smaller, sleeker than the grey squirrels we knew in the UK.  One house we lived in had them in the loft and we kept cages up there to capture them and release them in the woodland the other side of the M25 in the hope that they wouldn't find their way back.  Clara, our then Airedale, used to be the epitome of "barking up the wrong tree" - sat there, head thrown back, nose pointed up the trunk, yelling her head off, when the grey squirrel above her would be long gone.

Until today, we have never seen squirrels in our garden - of any hue.  He (or she) has just whisked past an open French window, almost on the threshold, red tail waving in the breeze, feathery ears erect. 

The word has obviously gone round about the quality and quantity of the hazel nuts we are growing this year. The other day I googled "when are they ready to eat?"  I'm guessing the new addition to our wildlife will shortly be letting us know!

Only half in jest ...

 ... I wonder out loud about putting my thermals on.

Fifteen degrees first thing, and the temperature struggles to get any higher as the day goes on.  Our Dutch guests leave early.  At least their journey north, even if there are many hold-ups, will not be in unbearable heat.  Travelling on the Saturday 31st July with France on the move is not the easiest of things to be doing.

By the afternoon, and a little stir crazy, we decide to head out to investigate a restaurant friends have recommended.  COVID has had an impact.  Several of our favourite places that we have proposed to our guests over the years have either closed or have changed hands with less than positive results.  New owners are struggling to match previous high standards of menu and service and I'm busy revamping our information pack and website to reflect our new reality, saddened by the need to do so.

But maybe we have been in a rut. When we came here fourteen years ago, everything was new to us and over those first few months we were on a voyage of discovery.  We are so again.

The recommended restaurant proves to be a success, in a lovely setting by a lock, ample seating out under the trees and plenty of covered space if the weather is inclement.  The menu is simple, but good value and the provenance of a chef and a kitchen that we already know and trust.

We look for new places that have attractive spaces to sit outside. In these times of COVID people prefer that option and normally, with late evening temperatures in the high twenties who wouldn't?  Mind you, if this cool weather continues much longer I need to warn our next guests to bring their thermals if they want to dine al fresco (very "fresco").  

Perfect Weather!

 Our Dutch guests have brought perfect summer weather with them.  Temperatures in the low thirties during the day and a lovely cool high teens at night. Bliss.

In my usual panicky final stages getting the cottage ready (why? I've had six months to do this!) I hummed and hawed about rigging up the free-standing air conditioners in the two bedrooms.  I always put them out reluctantly.  The hot air extraction pipe needs access to the outside, so I've created a Heath Robinson affair that means I tack a clear plastic "window" with a hole in it into the open frame and the vent pipe pokes through the hole.  It works, but it is not beautiful.  And the machine itself is clunky and clumsy and clutters the room.  

When temperatures at night are in the twenties our guests are just grateful for the relief and are not fussed how the air conditioners look, but the bedrooms are much more attractive without them. Having already too much to do, the prospect of taking time (twice over) wedging the plastic in the frame, finding some tacks and then fighting with the vent pipe to get it to stay in the hole helped in the end sway my decision to tuck the machines back into their corners out the way.  I'm glad now I did.

Our guests think the cottage looks lovely - helped, no doubt, by the glorious sunshine but also by the absence of clunky machines in the bedrooms.

Wet!

Vita stands beside me at the kitchen counter as I make tea.  A small puddle from her beard forms on the tiles at our feet.  She has been drinking and (as usual) half her water bowl finishes on the floor and not in her mouth. I'm still in my dressing gown, but I'm not going out anywhere soon, so no rush to get dressed.

Rain falling from the wisteria makes a metallic tinkling noise as it drips on the long ladder lying propped against the wall - too big and heavy to lift back into the rafters of the porch behind the house where it should reside.

The water butts are full to overflowing.  The swimming pool cover is awash.  Yet another soggy night and day. 

We're into July and summer continues to elude us.  We scan the weather forecasts to check days when we might get some sun, so we can snatch the opportunity to mow the lawns and Karcher the cottage terrace.

We have guests from Holland arriving in two weeks.  We just hope the sun comes out for them. Though maybe for the Dutch this is good weather?

Yesterday's steady rain topped off by an evening thunderstorm ...

... has given the garden a good soaking, though has been hard on the roses.

Following a week of temperatures in the thirties, the roses were beginning to struggle.  Blooms already on the edge of falling have been scattered by the wind.  The swimming pool skimmer basket is full of pale pink.

In the days before the heat, knowing the likely outcome, I wandered the garden with my camera and tried to capture the roses in their glory.  I rarely can do them justice, but here is a hint of their splendour.

Cotinus Coggygria Atropurpurea

 My father loved words and had a rich and extensive vocabulary. He was the son of a milkman, born at the beginning of the twentieth century into a family that believed profoundly in education as a means to improvement.

He excelled at school, not just academically but also in sports and, had he been born in another era, he would certainly have gone to university. But, at an impressionable age and from a poor family, he had seen the hunger marches in the early twenties and knew what poverty was, so believed he needed to get a job as soon as he left school.  But that did not stop him continuing to learn.  Books were his route to knowledge.

And that love of language continued right into his final months, even when of frail health and uncertain mental capacity.  We shared those final months when he and my mother came to live with us. 

The "back garden" in our shared house was no more than a couple of stepped terraces, but at some point it must have been planted by a skilled gardener - each bush and tree chosen as the best of its kind.  And there, in the middle of a small border was a plant we had not met before - a purple smoke bush.  Or, to give it its proper name - cotinus coggygria atropurpurea.  My father delighted in remembering and rolling those Latin words round his tongue!

There has been a smoke bush in every garden we've had since.

I tried to plant one down at the cottage, in the border that you first see as you come down the drive.  I knew that, once large, its beautiful ruby purple leaves would catch the morning sunlight.  But the ground there is unforgiving - sandy and, even when dug over, full of builder's rubble - and I lost my first attempt.  

I decided to try again, and nursed the new, small plant through last year and this wet winter. Imagine my delight as I saw new buds forming in these last few weeks.  Imagine my distress when two days ago I found two-thirds of the plant broken down!  Wretched deer!!!  They are lovely in the fields, less welcome in the garden.

The now much reduced smoke bush has a large fence of heavy-duty green plastic mesh encircling it.  Not very beautiful, but very necessary, I suspect for a year or two.  And the broken off piece?  Small stubby twiglets dipped in cinnamon powder (apparently useful as a rooting compound) are now on the terrace in a pot - maybe (fingers crossed) one or two may take.

Dad, I need your help please, from up there in your scholarly paradise, in looking after the twiglets and the small bush.  In a few years' time, when our guests ask me "what is that lovely purple bush with its delicate smoke-like flowers?" I want to be able to say, casually, "oh, that's our cotinus coggygria atropurpurea." And I will think of you.

It's Taken Time

 When we moved here thirteen years ago, there was little or nothing in the garden except for an occasional plant stuck in the middle of lawn.  

It made sense for the previous owners to have a garden like that (and many do round here).  The house was a holiday home, sometimes not visited at all for many months on end.  So gardening needed to be low maintenance - a quick whip round with the mower and not much else.  And with mild wet winters and warm early springs followed by baking hard clay in hot dry summers weeding large flower borders can easily become a full-time job. Not what one wants to be doing on a fortnight's holiday - and many of the locals feel the same, preferring to put effort and energy into their spotless, weed-free potagers.

So there, in the middle of the lawn in front of the house, was this dry, sad twig, which tended to be mowed over by mistake more years than not.  Further across was a muddled heap of honeysuckle.  So the twig and the honeysuckle became the opposite ends of a new, oval flower bed.

The twig, safe from the mower and given a chance to thrive proved to be a tree peony.  It's taken time, but this year there are nine flouncy pink flower heads, with promise of more for next year from fresh green shoots coming up from the base. Like the roses, peonies seem to like our heavy clay.