Thursday

Pretty early start this morning, which was a bit of a waste of time as the other person didn’t turn up. Gave me an early start on the day though to make some more time to spend outside. No bad thing either as it was far too nice to be head down working all day.

I picked up my secateurs to take a brief sojourn into the garden and trim back one of the hydrangeas and got distracted by the irises. I have however managed to collect quite a lot of seeds which is something. I also managed to clear a couple of spots.

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Also spotted this little guy. There’s also one that we saw that other day running into the potting shed so Matt has decided to call them: Basement Bob and Shed Ed.

During his lunch break Matt also managed to make some good progress on the kitchen wall.

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I mentioned to one person on the Gardening in France FB group that I’d put together a seed planner and had a surprising amount of interest so have now added a new page to include the somewhat less exciting parts of the garden planning.

After a bit more work I finally had a go at one of the hydrangeas. Ok, there is a lot more to do just to clear up that one bed but it’s a good start and only 3 more to go.

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Matt and I both have late calls so I got relegated to the temporary kitchen – there aren’t many rooms with working lights! Was a productive meeting though and hopefully an exciting community mentoring programme to deliver in the summer. Not quite as exciting as planning a meeting with Peter for next week though. I really miss having our face to face (in the pub) meetings though, these virtual beers really don’t cut the mustard!

Since I’ve made a bit more personal time this week it’s also resulted in more pictures and updates. I must admit that it feels much richer done on the day when it is fresh in your mind but it’s hard work.

[18 February 2021]

Friday

The standard meeting with the PS has become pretty early since he’s been working on CET too (Matt taught me that one today – I just had GMT and Fr/It time). A few more emails and calls and lunch before we go out to avoid the otherwise unavoidable McDonalds drive through – I’m really not sure I can deal with this being the only take away possible in France, it’s incredibly depressing. We are then off to go meet some French guy called Anthony in a car park in Estancarbon..

Apparently this is some sort of network case thing and the guy was down from Toulouse and it was half the price of buying a new one. Whatever, means nothing to me either.

Off to Noz while we are here and found lots of random beer for Matt, a few wines and these which had some fun labels so we bought a couple of the reds just for being interesting.

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Next stop was Action. A few more extension power boards and a bucket.. Yep, we are very interesting. Stopped in at Rural Master as our big bins all have very large cracks in them but we are definitely going to need to get some rainwater harvesting set up. 350L bin with a tap point for €30 seems pretty reasonable, but will maybe see if we can rescue what we currently have with some epoxy first.

Was a nice day so took some pics of the drive.

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Made some good progress finally on clearing the left front of the house. It’s not perfect but it looks so much better and makes the house look taller.

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Matt on the other hand has been off clearing a whole load of the leaves on the ride on lawnmower that he’s just fixed. If only I’d had the time to make that leaf mulch bin first.

Time for a glass of wine and to relax for the evening – the big deep patch in the wall is still drying out so no progress there. TV and cuddles beckon so I’m off. Night all xx

[19 February 2021]