Friday

Back home finally and the first thing to do is to enjoy the garden. The lilies are out already and looking good, although I wish they could have waited till the wedding, but then that will be true of almost every plant, none will actually flower when I want them to. And I picked up a few more plants, naturally.

Matt and I have been finalising plans for how the summer kitchen needs to be planned out. We then tried to get a bit more done inside, to greater and lesser effect, before finally having steak frites outside.

Some of my templates also arrived today. It’s not all of them but I’m hoping that it might help with some of the things on the house and for wedding decor. I’ve been looking late into the night about what should be flowering when, if there is anything I can do to push them back or bring them forward, it’s exhausting – and now nearly 4am! I have been going mental about how on earth Chelsea manages to do this – never again.

[9 June 2023]

Saturday

The lilies really are beautiful right now, even if they are too early. They are also covered in lily beetle so it’s a constant battle. Hopefully the white ones will flower on command…! I hope !

Matt meanwhile is out mowing the lawn and trying to help battle the flies.

Lunch and time for a quick swim, everything is hard work in the heat.

There’s no break for the wicked though, so we are off to do some work on the second floor. There’s just so much to do it’s mental.

Of course, what else could happen in a day..

Well, how about your cat bringing in a protected animal – yay ?! It’s a bat. I’m not sure why I noticed it first but Matt has learnt to trust me on this and he managed to help me get her off it while he took it away and I calmed the cat.

He was quickly named ‘Bruce’. You have to be careful apparently not to touch bats due to viruses so we took to him with a towel.

Now time to work out what the f*** you do with a bat?!

After a bit of research it seems that it is most likely to be stunned so unless there are any signs of serious harm, make it comfortable in a box, just a small hole will be big enough but it needs to be raised to fly. So, being us, it was rigged with BatCam to ensure we could watch it recover and see it leave.

Well that was exciting… after about an hour of resting and crawling around inside the box Bruce discovered the hole and flew off! Time for bed and to dream of bats in the belfry.

[10 June 2023]

Sunday

Cracking on with the house today and big efforts being made in Rooms 5 and 6. First is finishing running the cables through the back and the last layer of insulation.

Then lining up the reflective insulation in the windows – none of which are straight of course, and the vapour barrier that needs to go in between the insulation and the plasterboard.

Next job is getting this all boarded up and having a look at the boarding in the second floor bathroom. There’s so much to do and so little time to do it all.

There’s another big old job to do too. There’s a lot of carpet underlay thoroughly stuck to the beautiful old floor boards so this is going to take some time but I’m committed to chipping away at it. I think I have earned a lot of caesar salad.

[11 June 2023]

Monday

This morning we have a delivery of pellets. The cost has finally come down after a year of crazy prices and we’ve found a company that can blow them in – as it was designed for – which will save me being ‘birthed’ each time, climbing in and out of the hopper. More looking at lilies while they do their thing.

Next job for me is to get the window/door frames prepped. They need so much prepping, sanding, filling and work, but it will be worth it to bring them back to life and make them fit for another 200 years (well, maybe 10 at least).

It’s already dinner time so that’s enough for today. Night all.

[12 June 2023]

Tuesday

Work, but we’re also going away tomorrow so Matt is out valeting the car – apparently my grubby gardening bum isn’t consistent with the white interior of our car. He’s done a lovely job of it though. I’m not so interested in this and there’s plenty more wedding stuff to go talk to the Mairie about. Unfotunately however it seems that the hours shown on Google are not correct – so I have naturally taken a picture for future reference, and update Google.

Then sorting the wine. What do we have ready for the wedding and what have we still not got?! Turns out that the answer is white.

Time for dinner and a Matt haircut before we go off to his AWS – machine learning cars – conference.

[13 June 2023]