REJUVENATION AND ANXIETY

During the recent spell of fine and very hot weather we tackled the rejuvenation of our outdoor furniture.  It was long overdue and worth the effort.  

Good as new!

Nick also painted our barn doors.  Another long overdue big job.

Lots of warm evenings means we have been making the most of our new gas barbecue.

Small but perfectly formed.

We were somewhat alarmed on seeing plumes of smoke billowing on the horizon a few days ago.  According to news reports it was yet another fire in a field a few kilometres away, a casualty of the heatwave.  Several hectares of forest and "broussaille" - undergrowth, weeds or scrubland, were destroyed, presumably along with wildlife, their habitat but thankfully no dwellings.

Unfortunately that's what we have all around us - scrubland.  The farmer who owns the huge field that we are in the middle of hasn't grown anything since 2022.  We now have huge, tall, very dry weeds and thick dead grasses wafting around in the strong hot winds.  His land comes right up to the boundary of our house, i.e. up to the walls.

Apart from the fact that it looks horrible, to us it seems like a serious fire waiting to happen.  All it would take is one cigarette tossed from a passing car, delivery van or tractor to start a fire.  We have spoken to the farmer who told us he wasn't prepared to do anything about it until August.  Last August during a heatwave he came and cut down a few metres of scrub around the house and left the rest.  We presumed he was cutting a fire break.  Bizarrely he also mowed the field across the road and baled all the huge weeds - then left them there.  He would need to shift about a hundred old brick shaped bales before he can do anything else with the land.

He said the land is too far from his farm (it's about 9½ km or 6 miles) and it would be too expensive to come and cut just part of it.  He wasn't at all concerned about our concerns about fire.  He also said a lot that we didn't understand owing to his accent and speed of speech but we got the gist.  He wasn't prepared to do anything.

Nick has strimmed an area around the house to act as a fire break.  It's very hard, time consuming and exhausting work with an ordinary domestic strimmer and we have no idea if it would actually make any difference in the event of a fire.

We don't know how realistic our fears are or where we stand.  Maybe we should contact the pompiers (fired department) for their advice.  We have written to the Maire to express our concern and ask for his advice.  He is always very helpful so hopefully we will find something out before we are burnt to a crisp.