Monday

Work, from morning until very late at night. Matt made a nice green curry for dinner though.

[12 April 2021]

Tuesday

Lots of work again today. Still quite cold but at least the sun has popped out briefly. It seems that Mr Wiggles has moved into the bee hotel before we’ve even had a chance to finish it. [We’ve become somewhat lazy in our naming since getting here – he’s called Mr Wiggles due to the way his little fuzzy bum wiggles as he goes in and out, that and saying it makes me smile.]

• 

Matt therefore decided that it was now or never to make the final adjustments and get it fitted. While being right next to the table on the veranda may not be ideal, raising up a few (or 6) feet should hopefully be sufficient and I’m keen that after all Mr Wiggles’ work that he can still find it. He was constantly in and out and I wasn’t spending every second looking at it as I had to work. So Matt turns it over to attach the strut and a few seconds later he pops out, apparently he wasn’t too upset by being flipped upside down.

With the bee hotel raised to the roof, there’s not much more to do than get back to work; and keep an eye out for Mr Wiggles. He’s clearly very confused when he returns, keeps going back to where it should be, starts looking around and flies off again to return a minute later and look again. Eventually he makes it up to the box and finds his tube. That’s a relief, time to get back to work.

I’m still working late but looks like these two are cozy. About to go to bed and remembered I’d promised to do a slide on my project for a Baroness’ talk tomorrow and there’s no way I’m getting up in the morning to do it so up till nearly 1am to get it finished. Definitely now time for bed.

• 

[13 April 2021]

Wednesday

Seriously confused about what day it is at this point. Glad to have a full day focused back on the ‘day job’ though and creating presentations. Various calls and other bits and pieces but it’s been a good day so had a quick walk around the garden before it got dark. Seems that the wildflower garden that so many people spend so much time making will just do itself here, we have some lovely patches of massive daisies (that remind me of the huge ones we used to have in the paddock at the farm – you only needed one to make a whole necklace) and what we suspect might be cow-parsley.

• 

• 

Seems that a bee found his way into the living room and couldn’t find his way out. Thankfully it seems that we found him in time and made up some yummy sugar water which seemed to do the trick and bring him back up to strength. He’s been lucky.

Burgers for dinner and finally a relaxing evening and glass of wine.

[14 April 2021]

Thursday

Another busy day at work. About 5pm I decided I’d quickly go and pop some carrot seeds in but realised it would need a little more turning over to reach 30cm deep. This did not work out as planned. Seems that the rotavator had just skimmed the surface on this bit so a 5 min job rapidly spiralled into Southern France’s version of Time Team (Kiwis will have to Google this one but it was presented by Baldrick from Black Adder, aka Tony Robinson). I had been telling Matt for weeks that there was an unusual line of stones across the back end of the veg plots, today I was proved right to think that something was up. I found a mass of slate, bigger stones (mostly marble), glass and pottery.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

I’m pretty sure that Matt appreciated me constantly walking in to put my muddy new finds on his desk throughout his conference call. Eventually it finished and he came out to help while I found a tiny bottle, maybe a perfume bottle?! Convinced to help the chances of finding anything more disappeared pretty quickly however he did get the job done. With the first few rows of Chantenay and Nantes carrots sown I could finally get back to work. With all the time lost it was another late night.

• 

[15 April 2021]