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Paques – Pt 2

April 9, 2021 by Chantal Chaney

Easter Sunday

First big job of the day is to work out what is happening over at the side of the fireplace as Matt suspects that the joist is totally rotted and we can’t finish framing up the room until it’s replaced. I think you can tell from the look on his face that he wasn’t wrong. That is definitely a very rotten piece of wood.

Replacing joists, even little ones like this is not a short job. With the first one in we prepare a joist hanger for the second one. Unfortunately as Matt is preparing it part of the fireplace comes apart. Now I’m no expert in building fireplaces, but whatever is going on here doesn’t look great. This may push forward the decision about replacing the fireplace. Thankfully we managed to get the second joist in without any further damage.

I’ve measured up and cut the uprights in preparation for the next section, Matt’s job is to get them in and straight. Since there’s not much more I can do to help I pottered off to the garden to string out the next bed and make a bit more progress with the vegetable garden.

Seems that while we have been toiling away, Meow has been making the most of the garden furniture.

With the sun lost at the back it was time for a well deserved break and a glass of wine in garden. Cheers all.

Time to relax but looks like Meow is starting to get very comfortable and appears to have claimed Matt as her new favourite cushion.

[4 April 2021]

Easter Monday

I’m woken abruptly by Matt telling me that the ‘tree guy is here’ and I must come and speak to him. Turns out that it wasn’t the tree guy but the neighbour coming to take me to the guy round the corner so I grab a mask and jump into the car with him, in my pyjamas. A quick chat with the owner of the cherry picker and he’s agreed to rent it to us to pollard the two birches in that are blocking the sunset.

Back at the house it’s a pretty exciting day. We’re having people over to visit! It’s a random couple that I met through the Gardening in France group. I’m pretty excited about the prospect of having someone other than Matt to talk to, I just hope that they are interesting. With having visitors however we’re going to have to tidy the house in preparation, and there was a lot of cleaning that needed to be done if we were considering showing someone round.

Cressida and Johnny arrived about 2pm. They arrived bearing wine and seedlings, this is a good start. After chatting for a couple of hours they had to go but I have to say, they were absolutely great company and we had plenty of things in common; wine, phobia of mornings, rugby, etc. They only live a 10-15 min drive up the road and are planning to put in a pool soon which can’t be a bad thing, it’s going to be sometime before a pool hits the top of our todo list.

After they’d left I found out that Matt has always wanted to build a treehouse. That’s pretty convenient as I have always wanted to have a treehouse. And, just like that there’s another job on the list.

Next on the list I want to get some more bamboo. Matt’s watching some solitary bees which seem to be making a home in the wood of our veranda so he’s keen to make a bug hotel and I want some more canes for the garden. Thankfully there is a big chunk of it growing wild down by the railway tracks and it appears that someone has already chopped a load down or it’s fallen down. So we collected some up and carried it back on the wheels. Not the easiest of tasks when one piece was nearly 6m long but we made it in one piece.