Milk And Beans, Beans And Milk

26th May
There's a farm nearby that sells milk hot off the cow’s teat - on my previous visits I'd turned up at the wrong time (too early they're still milking, too late the milk lorry has taken it all away). Today when I arrived at the dairy a woman was swabbing the floor, we chatted in French at first, then she asked where I was from and she started speaking to me in English Canadian which was nice and interesting so my return was considerably delayed - but I did have several gallons of milk with me.

When I finally got back to the house I discovered that Mme Costaud had cycled by to tell us about a bees nest up a tree in the woods that was all open at the back. I was mortified to discover that The Director had shown her my potager. Like everyone around here Mme Costaud's potager is massive and immaculate - mine is a mess, the beans especially, are weedy and smothered with aphids. The Director thinks that she gave him some advice about pruning but I suspect she was telling him to set fire to it and start again.

I returned Mme C's visit and found her dressed in her husband’s clothes picking her way through a field of tree-sized broad bean plants. M. Costaud was in the back yard, wearing a lady's veiled sun hat and chopping wood. I joined in with the bean-picking and was sent home with very large sack of beans for our household.

Garden Envy

13th Aug
I have become afflicted with garden envy. Not for the leisure sort of garden with grass and flowers because most examples of that in the area are rubbish. I want a potager like my neighbours have. Great lush ranks of artichokes, beans, courgettes and potatoes flourishing next to high, burgeoning tresses of tomatoes. Bright lettucey things in neat rows and big bushy herbs lining the paths. The potager at the Lovely House has not been looked after for many years and is full of nettles and brambles. Digger Man tearing it up to fill a hole in the dam earlier didn't really help either. I've repaired the worst of the damage, cleared the weeds and started a compost heap, but apparently we're supposed to be making a film, so I’ve had to be content with gazing longingly over Mr Bert's hedge on my way to the phone box to call France Telecom (sigh, still no landline), watching him pick leaves off things and tie-up stuff.

I'm still picking mystery vegetable packages off the gate, Mr Bert claims no knowledge of who it might be.

If I go in the other direction towards the bar there are other gardens but I have to stand on my bicycle pedals to see them over the hedges as I wheel past. Arriving at the bar today people are playing pétanque outside, Mrs Strange is behind the bar, she tells me that some Dutch people have set up a pétanque club.

First supper under the lime tree

24th july
I uprooted the thistles and nettles that were foresting the area in front of the house. There is a beautiful but unkempt lime tree whose branches were almost sweeping the ground. I lopped back the branches as high as I could reach and cleared away the rusty scrap iron piled up around it’s trunk. Now I have a shady area for dining with a view over the the potager wall, now we can see the poor old pear tree victims of digger man. Amazingly they are valiantly still producing fruit. As I was gardening I uncovered a massive cedar stump which is in an ideal place to build a campfire, it smells fantastic when burning. On Tuesday, to inaugurate my new dining room I decided to invite the Bontettes for supper.

Mr B is ex-military and probably quite likes a bit of camping but Mme B is a lady with a French manicure, a weekly hairdresser habit and very high heels. I can see their place from mine - they drive the 500 metres to my house. My front ‘lawn’ is quite a challenge to high heels. I set the table under the lime tree, got the fire going and did the cooking right there. The problem with running a dinner party single-handed in a new house is that it’s the sort of learning curve best experienced with good friends. Not having the right implements, correcting wobbly tables, embers getting too cool too quickly all had it's effect on the food. I also forgot to get candles, learned that the outside lights don’t work and that it really does get quite dark once the sun goes down.

The Director called. Apparently the series isn’t quite as ‘in the bag’ as we’d thought. I flew back to the UK late last night.

Destruction

20th June, France
A man with a digger turns up to mend a hole in the dam on 'our' land. He does this by scooping through the wire fence surrounding the potager and filling his bucket with topsoil which he dumps into the hole in the dam. When he’s done, the torn fence lies frayed at an angle towards the ground and there's a black hole showing the ragged roots of two espaliered pear trees left exposed by his work.

I go back to the phone box and call FT again but despite repeated tries I can't get through.