19 September 2018

IT’S STILL SUMMER HERE

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August disappeared in a blur.  We returned to the UK in order to get our back garden “fixed”.  It was a mess of worn out patio tiles, hugely overgrown shrubs, little paths, low crumbling walls and a leaking pond.  We came to the conclusion that it would take us months of work if we tried to sort it out ourselves and in fact hardly any of it was worth saving.  What we needed was help to turn it into a very low maintenance garden so that we could spend our summers in France not worrying about it.  We hired a firm of landscape gardeners and after two weeks of intense building work followed by two weeks of watering, planting and tidying, it is now the garden that we wanted. At last the place feels like home.  All the major work both outside and inside is done and what’s left is down to us – some decorating and a bit of DIY.

On 2nd September we returned to France, our August mission successfully completed.

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We have had a lot of visitors this year.  Our last visitor was our niece Joanna, who usually comes with her dad (my brother) but was by herself this time.  She travelled to France with us – quite a car full with Joanna, the dog and cat - and the trailer full of all our luggage.

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We had a great time showing her round some of our favourite places – above at the château at Rivau.

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We also took her to the châteaux at Islette, Bouges and Loches, and to many other places.  She was very lucky with the weather which was fantastic for her whole stay, which always makes anybody’s holiday so much more enjoyable.

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Now our last visitor, like the swallows, has flown.  We did a little calculation and worked out that if you add one day to both sides of the stay of each set of visitors for the getting ready and clearing up afterwards, it comes to seventy days this year.  If you add to that the time that both of us have spent in the UK by ourselves that comes to ninety days.  Which means that since we arrived here at the end of March we have had very little time here together, just the two of us.

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Luckily, it is still summer here. We still have warm, sunny days but with cooler evenings and nights, the perfect combination and the reason that September is probably my favourite month of the year.  It rarely disappoints it’s lovely to have some time and the house to ourselves.

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The garden suffered badly in spite of occasional watering during August but a couple of weeks of TLC have brought it back to life and restored a bit of colour.  The grass is still brown, the only green patches being weeds or where Hugo has “watered” it.

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We have eaten outdoors as often as we could, making good use of our picnic shelter which always provides shade at any time of day.  There’s nothing quite like a long, lazy lunch in the sunshine to make you feel completely relaxed.

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Lazing around is something we have had little time for so far this year so now we’re making the most of it, using all the sitting areas that we have placed around the house.  We can sit in the shade somewhere at all times of day.

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Daisy settled in straight away after her month back in the UK, jumping out of the car as soon as we opened the door and making a quick check of the premises and the wildlife.  Hugo loves it here, having so much more space to run around in and play.

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And this week we took the motorcycles out for a lovely long run in the sunshine, stopping for lunch at the little restaurant in St. Flovier, something we have not been able to do for a long while.  We have been too busy to ride them and the restaurant has been full the last three times even though we arrived there just after 12.00pm, holiday makers filling up the tables not taken by the usual clientele.  This time there were just a dozen or so workers taking their lunch break and us.

Life in France is back to normal !!

6 comments:

  1. Do you leave Hugo alone in the house when you go out on the bikes? We haven't done that yet. Tasha doesn't seem ready to stay by herself.

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    1. Ken, yes we do. We started by leaving him for a few minutes and building up. He wasn't happy at first but he got used to it and now if we say "we're just going to the shops" he knows that's the signal that he'll be on his own for a while. We can now leave him for several hours without mishaps although there were a few at first. We just had to bite the bullet and work through it.

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    2. I know we need to do the same. We did that with Callie and it turned out fine. We've left Tasha only once, when we were invited over to the neighbors' for a birthday party. Tasha sat out on the terrace and could probably hear our voices from across the way. Since Walt and I seldom go "to the shops" together, one of us is always here with the dog.

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    3. The solution might be for both of you to go out for a short while so that she is completely alone and can't hear your voices. We used to leave the radio on for Hugo so that the house was not completely quiet. We don't need to do that now.

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  2. It all looks grand. I hope the autumn is just as good for you.

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  3. I am glad to see you are back. I have been waiting for months to read about you and your family. Daisy is my favorite. Love the new landscape in the UK.

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