French Country – Page 6 – Our French Oasis

Making the Most of the Rain

Sometimes, when it’s bucketing down with rain or just horribly cold and damp, it would be much nicer to stay inside; it would be so easy to batten down the hatches and work in the warmth of the kitchen, never straying too far from the wood-burning stove. But that is not an option when you have dogs. I only have to touch a lead hanging from the door and Bentley and Evie are at my feet, looking at me with that expectancy that says they just know they are going for a walk; by the time we’re in the boot room and I’m reaching for my wellies, there’s a keen sound of excitement at floor level; they don’t care if it’s wet or cold, or howling a gale; they just want to get out there! Our 200 year-old flagstones sigh at the scratching of paws and the wind-banging slam of the door as we go out and brave the elements.

I have walked with a certain spring in my step the past couple of days as the dogs and I leapfrogged puddles and dodged showers. I am extremely grateful for the response to my questions about blogging in my last post and I was naturally happy to hear that you like things as they are. Thank you all so much. As a result I have maybe stopped a little more frequently with my camera, spurred on to share all around me, and I’ve been re-arranging words to better describe what I see and hear. This deep in the country we don’t have any opportunity to have an ‘extravagant’ lifestyle, instead we take extreme pleasure in the most simple things; whether that’s our family life, the animals, the scenery, the fresh produce or just being grateful that we do not sit in traffic for a fifth or more of our waking day. Yes, we’re lucky, and we know it, and we appreciate it; and yes, we know how fortunate we are to live in the online age, where small luxuries can be bought with the click of a mouse too. It’s a magical mixture.

I never tire of the views on our routine dog-walk straight from the house. It takes me just one hundred paces to move from the 21st century and a computer-screen to this old landscape, where an ancient fortress surveys a working landscape it once proudly guarded from the ravages of Barbary pirates and the plundering attacks of British yeomen; where centuries of tears, smiles, births and deaths lie buried deep in the cloying inevitable embrace of the marsh that is the Marais de Brouage.

Looking across at little hamlets, that have stood for centuries, I stand on a path that pilgrims have trod for 14 centuries, and still do today, as they go southwards to the great cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in north-west Spain.

We go past dormant vines, not really enough to be called a vineyard, in fact there are just a hundred or so plants for someone’s private use – some of these ‘house’ wines are very unsubtle, some are little treasures.

Bentley is always content to wait and take a breather while I take photos, he being of a slightly senior age, but Evie at only seven months old cannot sit still; she’s off, on the scent of a rabbit or some purely imaginary smell. Nose to the ground, she follows a translucent path of scent, weaving right and left, her nose twitching like the billion-pixel imagery tool it truly is. Bentley watches with knowing amusement as she scampers around wasting so much energy. However, our dog-training efforts are finally starting to pay off and she now comes back when called (most of the time!). She races back to the track ahead from where she’s been lost in some adventure, far out in the field or deep in a hedgerow, and darts around in all directions before shooting off ahead again, covering ten times as much ground as the rest of us.

The weather has thrown everything possible at us this week, we have had freezing temperatures, gale force winds, torrential rain and beautiful sunshine. One morning we woke up to a rare frost and a thin sheet of ice on the puddles and the pool. Gigi and Hetty had a fine five minutes before school playing in our temporarily frozen landscape.

A couple of days ago I arranged to meet someone I wanted to talk to about three houses she has renovated; this is for a future blogpost next month. The weather could scarcely have been worse. I set off straight after the school-run, the thermometer only just above freezing and the rain battering against the windscreen, wipers on full speed. Heading north-east and away from my usual stomping ground I started to go inland through little villages I didn’t know. On the way home I kept making deviations and stopping to take photos; my return journey taking a good hour longer than it should have done. I passed several small chateaux, the type that look ‘lived in’ by families rather than just being museums open to the public, and I made a mental note of many places I had to return to when I had more time and the school pick-up was not approaching rather too quickly.

I stopped briefly in St Savinien, a small Gallo-Roman town, on the banks of the Charente; the rain had eased finally, which is just as well as the umbrella I had grabbed in my haste to leave the house on time was in fact broken, a fact I discovered with sigh of resignation as I arrived at the house I was visiting – alas the girls had used it once too often for some Alice in Wonderland adventure in the garden.

I stood staring at near deserted streets I had once seen in a very different season, for we had been here before last summer; then, flowers adorned every window box, boats with tourists silently glided down the river and locals and tourists alike strolled along the ancient streets. Now it was almost unrecognizable but just as photogenic, with the streets and houses slick with watery reflections.

A little closer to home and after another quick detour I came across this wonderful farmhouse, with a large Vendu sign, clearly marking that it has recently been sold. I thought what a wonderful home it would make, tucked away off the beaten track but not totally isolated, located in a tiny village with a small church and a clutch of similar houses.

and I also realised that I don’t need perfect sunny days all the time to take photos, as sometimes the light can be magical on grey days, when rain magnifies colours even if it’s cold and bleak.

So whatever the weather where you are today, I hope you have a wonderful Sunday.

January 24, 2016 by ourfrenchoasis

LOCAL ARTISANS – THE PAYSAGISTE

Michel Libouban left school at 15, and decided then that a life on the open sea was for him. Never one for classes despite good marks, he was keen to get out and do something for himself from an early age. However, after one trip on the high seas he realized his mistake and took up a station in a commercial bakery, instead. After six months or so of repetitive work on what was basically an assembly line, he then realized that his love for nature may provide an answer, and so he signed on as an apprentice ‘paysagiste” – someone qualified as a horticulturist who plies their trade as a gardener and garden designer – a very honest metier in France. Years passed, and as he qualified through a long 10-year period of study he met his wife at college, and settled down in a small village close to his parents, both doctors in the seaside town of Royan.

The rest of this blog today should of course now be about his life in the fields and gardens of his countryside, and how at the age of 45 he is now at the peak of his career, caring for the plants and flowers of the rich and famous. But something is amiss, and Michel finds himself at a crossroads in his life as a result of many converging differences. It makes me wonder whether this is happening right across France, or perhaps across Europe, and perhaps overseas. But first, we need a little recap.

Anyone who is visiting France and loves gardening will try and include a visit to the formal gardens of Versailles. If you have never been to Versailles but have even the merest passing fancy in a rose, you should make this trip. The gardens at Versailles were designed by André Le Nôtre and are proof that French gardens reached their clearest expression in the 17th and 18th centuries under Louis XIV and Louis XV. It was at this time that gardens provided a symbol of status, and their importance to lifestyle and culture at this time cannot be overestimated. The traditional French garden tends to have a strong symmetrical axis and is very structured which is in contrast to the English garden which reached its height with the Romantic movement in the 1790’s and early 1800’s. English gardens of this era highlighted the variety of nature and its capacity to inspire the imagination; they usually included ponds or a lake, rolling lawns doted with animals, large trees and spaces of natural fantasy rather than geometric constructions of nature. Ironically by the late 18th century the trend of the English garden had spread, and famously, even Marie Antoinette had a small English garden created at Versailles, where she would dress in simple muslin garments and milk cows.

Versailles is a little out of reach for a day trip and some photos for you all, but we have Rochefort, ten minutes to the north of us, which is of course a town developed by the same Louis XIV, and it too has gardens and public spaces that amply reflect the thoughts of those gardeners from the era – it’s fascinating to see the formality of layout and planting which has continued up until today.

As a result of these entrenched traditions, the paysagiste is regarded as a true artisan in France and French gardens are for the most part still considered to be a symbol of pure art. French gardeners tend to have a far more formal approach to gardening than the English or Americans, and French gardens are much copied and aspired to around the world, especially two of its main parameters -the parterre and the formal potager.

It was armed with these thoughts in mind, therefore, that Roddy and I set off for a morning with Michel to discover all the secrets of the life of a French landscape gardener. Walking into Michel’s garden to meet him it is immediately clear that this is the garden of a professional. Although small and haphazard due to the constraints of space and lifestyle, everything is very clearly thought out in terms of planting and plant selection – indeed, Michel specializes in plants and their biological needs, and he tries to instill that line of thought in all he does. However, not many of his clients are of the power and ilk that Louis XIV brought to the table, so the first shock of the day came when he said that the vast majority of his local clients, ordinary people with modest means, tended to lean towards a Mediterranean style in the Charente Maritime. Oleander, cyprus, olive, agave, pines, succulents of all sorts, grasses and other hardy bushes and shrubs that easily adapt to both the searing heat of the local summer, and the cold, wet salty winds of the autumn and winter. He added that even though France has that tradition of formality, life has changed, and no longer does anyone have the time or the inclination to run a team of hedge-trimmers, lawn-mowers and dedicated groundspeople that is required for a large formal garden. It’s an era of low maintenance and slim budgets, of adaptability and fortitude, and a substantial knowledge of rocks and gravel.

One of the main exceptions to the local style is the continued use of roses, in great profusion and in a huge variety of colours, that permeate every corner of every garden, street and hedgerow. The Charente Maritime is an area where I have never seen so many roses growing both domestically and wild, and so of course, Michel has one too, a huge rambling bush that climbs to about 25’ high against the uphill wall of his neighbour’s barn. Above it towers a fig tree, which is another staple of the area’s greenery – it seems every home has a fig tree somewhere which in turn leads to at least one table at every brocante or vide-grenier selling la confiture !

As a designer, Michel says much of his time is spent choosing plants and trees for his clients, and expressing their desires on plans he lays out according to their desires. Mixing colours and height, and transforming an area from a piece of burnt lawn into a manicured Mediterranean sub-space is relatively easy in terms of manual work, but the overall transformation is almost solely due to the finely tuned details he has acquired over the years as you can see from one of his projects from start to finish below. (the following four photos are courtesy of Michel)

As we walked through the vast nursery that was our first stop of the day, Michel started to educate us on the myriad of plants that surrounded us, and it became bewilderingly clear to me that this was a man who knows intimately and instantly where each piece of his jigsaw goes, right down to the details of the correct substrate in which to plant his choices. Calling out names in the French vernacular and the latin nomenclature, I was suddenly very aware that this was the son of two doctors, not merely a country person familiar with some greenery. Each huge shed we came to, was full of one family of plants or another, and Michel called out to them familiarly. I was utterly amazed at the amount of variety in each hothouse and when Michel explained that this was one of France’s largest commercial nurseries, I understood. It counts LeClerc and Gamme Vert amongst its clients……

As the morning progressed we moved from one location to another, from nursery to irrigation depot, and from wood-yard to tool-shop. As we rode along in Michel’s battered truck, potting-twine and weathered working-gloves around our ears, we learnt more and came to understand that despite the appearances and the business, Michel was worried. He was explaining how he has a swarm of bees in his roof and when I asked when he was going to get them removed he looked at me horrified, the truck swerving slightly across the road, and said he had no intention of removing them, and he waved airily at the countryside around us.

“Where will they go ?” he asked. “There is nothing out there any more for insects ! Your garden, and my garden are probably the only natural gardens in the village – that is why we always have bees in our flowers.” He banged his fist on the wheel in emphasis. “All the fields around the village – there is no goodness in them. That is why there are no birds anymore – they have nothing to eat, no insects, nothing……” and he dwindled into silence.

In the quiet that followed I looked across at Roddy and he was already asking the question before I could form the words; “Do none of your clients have organic gardens ?”

Michel shook his head sadly in answer. “Not many,” he replied. “Very few. And sometimes, even after a few months, they find it easier to go back to the weedkiller and the poisons.” Monsanto. He seemed to spit the word out the window.

We talked more then, and it became apparent that Michel was worried for his business. A man of principal, who pays his taxes, and a man of integrity who loves nature so much he has as many weeds in his garden as we do, it seemed there was a rising tide of legal but cheap day-gardeners emerging, under-cutting him at every turn. Increasingly, his clients say they have no need of his weekly garden care, as someone else is there instead, cheaper and quicker. Cheaper because they use the clients’ own tools, and cheaper still because they have no insurance and no tax to charge. Indeed, some clients can claim back money from the government for using the lesser artisan. Quicker of course, because they are not as thorough as Michel.

Coupled with all of that, is the way the new breed of un-qualified gardeners indiscriminately use chemicals and pesticides, little knowing what the real danger of them is, sometimes with no clue as to how they work or why, and ruining the goodness in every garden they visit. Michel explained that as he has got older, he has seen many people from the industry, from his early years, fall ill or even die as a result of ignorance when it came to the products they used to use, it’s now in later years that they are paying the price for this ignorance, it’s a really sad story. In half an hour we learnt of some terrible practices once used in the commercial industry, and discovered a long litany of crimes against nature that humans have committed in the past 40 years or so. Michel was concerned there was no future for him, nor for the true qualified artisan with a wheelbarrow, and perhaps none for his bees and other friends. We all became a little quiet.

As the morning came to a close and we returned home, I realized that people who garden naturally really do more for the environment than many think – it is not just a question of doing “good”, it’s really a question of doing as much as one can at a time when the world is growing smaller and less friendly for all the wildlife and insects that a garden depends on. It may have taken a Frenchman in a battered truck to illuminate some of the ideas I had read and thought about, but it is a lesson I will not readily forget. As we walked into our driveway and a cloud of small honey-bees rose from the honeysuckle hedge, I understood even more – I knew where they were going to spend the night and I knew we were doing the right thing, weeds and all.

June 3, 2015June 5, 2015 by ourfrenchoasis

HEN-ZILLA AND THE MOLLYCODDLED DUCKS

The children have just started two weeks of spring holidays, which makes me really happy. Friends coming and going, sleepovers here and there; it’s like Picadilly Circus but I love it. It also means there are a few extra pairs of hands to help in the garden; there is just so much to do at this time of year and weeds seem to grow overnight. We have been working so hard in the newly formed vegetable garden, and we spent the afternoon on Sunday planting out tomatoes, aubergines, peppers and hot chillies which are Millie’s project. We also put in some lettuce, salad greens, cucumbers, watermelons and courgettes. The children planted because that’s the fun part while I hoed up weeds and raked! Our beans we sowed a couple of weeks ago are now about 8″ high and the peas are shooting up. There are rows of tiny carrot tops peeping through the soil, along with the spinach and potatoes – it’s all so exciting. We have had to fence it to keep our dear feathered friends out, or else they would think we had planted a feast just for them, and we included the row of ten grape-vines inside the fencing because I read that chickens love grapes and we would not have a grape left if they were within their reach. Next project to hand cut all the grass under the vines!

Dear Rosie is being a very dutiful hen; she has less than a week to go now and we are all so hopeful we might get at least one chick. She leaves her nest briefly around 11am each morning: the routine is always the same as she wanders up the garden, stretches her legs and looks around. The others are really quite nasty to her as she is no longer “one of them” and they peck at her and chase her away if she comes too close; it’s actually rather sad to watch. After ten or fifteen minutes she swiftly heads back to her nest and carries on coddling her beloved eggs.

Eleanor is now also broody, sitting on two eggs and a ping-pong ball to make up the numbers! Our sweet, lovely, docile Eleanor, she of the Mad Hatters’ Tea Party fame, has turned into Hen-Zilla. Each morning when we open their door, she comes out straightaway clucking that special phrase of cluck we’re now getting used to; “Get out of my way, I’m an important broody hen with eggs to sit on; out of my way, out of my way, I need to eat, no time to waste!” and she is back inside and on her eggs within ten minutes, having made quite sure that we all know exactly how important she is!

But the real time-wasters are Penny and Adrian, the pair of ducklings we were given at the Farmers Market nine days ago. Most of the ducks sold that day no doubt were bought to be fattened and intended for the table. They would have gone into a large sandy enclosure with an old pond in the corner, where the last blade of grass would have long since ceased to exist. However, Penny and Adrian have entered a life of luxury, and are enjoying the pampered mollycoddled life of a pet duck! When they arrived, a temporary run was made for them, along with an old paddling-pool filled with clean cool water. The next day a new home arrived. A brand new dog-kennel was put together and filled with straw. Chairs were placed near the enclosure and the children would sit and watch them, chatting and laughing, the ducks getting used to people and their endless talking! The chickens came and took a look, wondering what all the fuss was about and who the new arrivals were. Penny and Adrian ate and swam and loved all the attention. Then just when they really thought life couldn’t get much better, it did – in fact it got a whole lot better. Yesterday the temporary fence was removed from around their paddling-pool and their deluxe house – they are free to wander in the garden along with the chickens. Their permanent pond is under construction, yet another project! The chickens take little notice of them and the cats have decided they are definitely too big to hunt and wander away. Bentley, being Bentley, totally ignores them. The ducks waddle around, they flap their tiny wings and run across the lawn – if this is what life is all about, it really is pretty good.

The garden is changing on a daily basis; it’s like a video on permanent fast-forward and everything is growing so fast. The first roses on a south-facing wall are blooming

I love the Arum Lilies, simple perfection

and the Tamarisk is never still, always moving in the breeze

We’ve also been walking, lots and lots of walking; it’s such a perfect climate at the moment, not too hot and not too cold and everywhere is so stunning. Hedgerows with sweet scented lilac, tall grass waving in the breeze, waiting to be cut for hay. The bright yellow of rapeseed cuts a colourful swathe across the landscape. Blowing dandelion seeds and making wishes. Childhood memories and carefree days.

Whenever we come home and walk down the driveway I am greeted by the beautiful flowering horse-chestnut. All the trees are incredible and in full leaf; one half of the garden is now a canopy of shade. Sometimes I just stand and stare. I call the children over to look at them as it’s all too easy to forget about the trees. They are just there, a part of the garden, and we do take trees for granted. But I like to draw attention to them as they are magnificent, hundreds of years old, and only then, standing looking up at the giant lime tree, do we all really see how huge it is.

April 28, 2015April 30, 2015 by ourfrenchoasis

TO MARKET, TO MARKET…

“To market, to market, to buy a fat pig, home again, home again, jiggety-jig” – remember that old nursery rhyme? It sprung to mind as the children and I headed off to a nearby farmers market last Sunday. The girls were drawn like magnets to the baby chicks, the ducklings and rabbits; little did they know they were intended for the pot rather than as pets. I didn’t see any pigs for sale but I am sure, had I made enquiries, I could have bought one, but I really don’t want a pig! This was a far cry from the usual weekly market where we buy our fresh fish, fruit, vegetables and cheese – the typical French market where the locals buy so much of their food every day. No, this was, as the name suggests, a real ‘Farmers’ market, in every sense of the word. The morning was neither sunny nor particularly warm but that had not deterred most of the locals who came from miles around. A huge undercover area had been set up for lunch. Two young lads were grilling vast slabs of meat on the barbecue and the tables were quickly filling up as lunchtime approached. We started at the plant stand where I bought lots of small geraniums for the garden before quickly moving on to local honey. We were offered so many different varieties to taste – sunflower honey, wild-flower honey, honey of the forest; nothing is ever hurried, everything is considered and discussed before a decision is made and there is no pressure to buy which in a strange way makes me buy more! Local organic strawberries were our next purchase, along with spring onions and asparagus; I was definitely getting hungry! We passed on the cognac tasting (the girls are a little young!) but there were plenty of people sampling, drinking and buying; chatting and telling stories, it was all so convivial. We had arranged to meet our good friends, Penny and Adrian, here at the market and they were quite adamant that we really needed a pair of ducks to add to our menagerie at home. I couldn’t even imagine going home and telling Roddy that we had come back with two more feathered friends, but they just laughed and Adrian said he knew a good lawyer! And so before I knew quite what was happening, two ducklings, not more than a few weeks old, were chosen and put into a cardboard box as a very belated house-warming present!

Back home and the sun decided to make it’s first appearance of the day – lunch on the terrace and a bottle of bubbly, if we needed an excuse then it had to be celebrating that Roddy loved the ducklings and the divorce lawyer was not needed! Adrian and Millie set about making a temporary outdoor run for our new acquisitions, complete with an old borrowed paddling-pool from our lovely neighbour. The ducklings are still too young to roam free (which is the long term plan, of course) but for the time-being I wouldn’t trust our dear nearly fully-grown kittens, Rory and Clara, until the birds are much bigger. Surprisingly Clara, who is a real hunter, has no interest in them, but Rory is intrigued. I don’t think he wants to hurt them, he just wants to play, but to him playing is all about teeth and claws; this is a great game with Bentley, but I’m not so sure it would be so good with two young ducklings, so we’re taking no chances.

So without further ado let me introduce you to the latest members of our family who Penny and Adrian baptized after themselves – I give you Penny and Adrian!

p.s. do make sure you have your volume turned up, the sound of them drinking is adorable!

If I was to tell you that they are even worse for wasting time, would you believe me ?

April 21, 2015May 19, 2015 by ourfrenchoasis

SO MUCH CAN HAPPEN IN 4 DAYS

It’s amazing how so much can happen in four days, I mean I know it is only four days since Sunday, that’s a fact, but it seems like four weeks. The French air-traffic controllers went back to work, and so Izzi flew back to University on Sunday. A hot and sunny day and the usually sleepy little airport at La Rochelle was a heaving mass of frustrated travellers and fractious children after so many cancellations. The arrivals and departures building is so sweet and so small you can’t even check in online as it doesn’t have the facilities, and I drove off leaving Izzi in a 65-minute queue for security. She texted me from the plane whilst they were sitting on the tarmac waiting to depart – 15 passengers had somehow gone missing, security had been completely swamped as three flights were leaving within ten minutes of each other, and she was next to a toddler and behind a crying baby and then someone threw a book at her head – all of this and she still hadn’t taken off! It was going to be a long 75 minute flight across the Channel!

Roddy is still hobbling with his infected foot and ‘septic shock’, and is on his second course of antibiotics. I’m therefore still flying solo so to speak, and there are far too many jobs around the garden still remaining half-finished. However, the days are drawing out and it isn’t getting dark until gone 9pm so after I have collected the children from school and everyone has been fed and watered there is still plenty of time for an evening dog walk and some playing in the garden.

More dramas on Tuesday evening when Gigi, our youngest, tripped over whilst playing in our neighbour’s garden and took the brunt of the fall on her wrist. Amidst floods of tears, I took her to our delightful local doctor who was happy to see her despite the fact it was definitely the apéritif hour! He suspected it might be a hairline fracture of her wrist and sent us to the Urgences in Royan; this was a little further than Rochefort but, in his words, much more efficient and with much less waiting time. I am really happy to say it wasn’t fractured but just sprained although she will be wearing a support bandage for the next couple of weeks. However yesterday she was back happily playing in the neighbour’s garden once again; the young bounce back so quickly at that age – it is making Roddy green with envy. When Gigi fell over, I had been in the middle of giving Bentley a much needed spring hair-cut as he was looking extremely shaggy! Poor chap – taking care of Gigi meant he got left unfinished – one side trimmed, the other still long and hairy – until the next morning. He looked like two different dogs, depending on which side you viewed him from!

The garden seems to have literally exploded into life; gone are the bare trees and in turn we have a jungle of semi-awakening buds and unfurling leaves, which literally seem to have burst open overnight. This was no gentle transformation! Of course the weather has played a major part in this, and we went from a pleasant 20C last week to a very hot 30C this week; in fact, we were actually having to water both our long-term plants in pots and also everything else we have recently planted. Whoever heard of having to water plants in April! The chickens have taken to foraging under the trees and old stone walls and avoiding the open shadeless lawn.

The plum blossom and peach blossom have long since given way to small fruits, but the cherry is still magnificent – a stunning backdrop of white amongst all the greenery surrounding it. The horse-chestnut is in full leaf and its flowers are poised to open any day. The Virginia creeper which climbs all the old stone walls has suddenly come to life, little red buds and delicate leaves appearing all over the place amidst the tangled web of the vine.

The wisteria spreading along the front of the house is stunning, and gently scenting the bedrooms above through the open windows with a sea of bluebells underneath.

Rhubarb has shot up out of nowhere in one corner of our newly formed vegetable garden. We didn’t even know it was there. The girls and I have sowed and hoed and weeded! We have cut and trimmed hazel sticks for the runner beans, and cut off the tops and made them into pea-sticks to support the peas as they start to grow. We have so far also planted potatoes, carrots and spinach.

The redcurrant and blackcurrant are all flowering, I think we have five of each; the irises are a vivid blue against a backdrop of green; and the tiny wild strawberries which grow in abundance under one of the south facing walls are in flower.

Our huge fig tree in the small courtyard to the side of the house has finally come into leaf and I am extremely relieved to see buds forming on the grapevines. Relieved as I have never pruned vines before, we have a row of old established vines which we incorporated into the vegetable garden which bear really sweet juicy red grapes and a huge old vine against the wall in the courtyard. They were all sorely lacking attention when we bought the house and after much advice from friends I tackled them just before Christmas and I was brutal! Every day I discover something new, it’s like entering a toy shop for the first time – I can’t wait to see what our garden has to offer in our first full year here.

Finally, Rosie, one of our sweet Pekim bantams has gone broody which has caused so much excitement in the household. It’s the first time we have had a broody hen. We moved her at dusk to the old small coop which we no longer use, a joint effort between Millie and I as we carefully carried her and re-located the eggs. However, nothing is that simple. Naturally, she was sitting on several of the larger eggs of the big girls (as we call our standard farm hens) and only two bantam eggs. So whilst Millie was at school the next day I waited until Rosie took a little time off her nest to switch a few more eggs. I waited and waited, and about 11 o’clock she hopped outside for a walk. Quickly I hurried down the garden with 6 bantam eggs from the past week and carefully put them in her nest, removing the large eggs from the big girls.

Mission accomplished, or so I thought. I waited a while to check she would go back into the coop and all would be well but when I checked, she wasn’t there! She’d gone back to the big coop they all share and was quietly patiently waiting outside the nesting box whilst one of the big girls laid an egg! Obviously I was going to have to pick her up and put her back on her nest, but I hate picking up hens and unfortunately a broody hen does not like being picked up – especially when she thinks she is being taken from her eggs. Bravely I donned my gardening gloves and carried her back to the old coop and her bantam eggs. Two days later and she has remembered which coop to go back to, and is being a very dutiful hen. Thank goodness she only has another 18 days or so to go! The excitement amongst the children is akin to the build up to Christmas. I hope to goodness that the eggs are actually fertilized and that Fritz has done his job. I am not asking for a lot, just one little chick would be fine, I’ll keep you posted!

April 16, 2015April 17, 2015 by ourfrenchoasis

TEN DAYS

There is something about the month of March in our family – the children nearly always fall by the wayside with this bug or that, they can happily navigate their way around all the winter sickness and then March arrives and wham, they drop like flies. I truly thought we had got away with it this year, but first Millie caught a medium dose of bubonic plague at school, and then Roddy found himself unable to walk after an ankle grew to the size of a football.

He claimed to be in some pain so our fabulous neighbour very kindly took him to the local Urgences (ER) in Rochefort as it was a Sunday afternoon. Several hours later, and armed with a sack-load of antibiotics he returned with an infected foot after spending several hours in one of those silly back-to-front tunics on a wobbly gurney in the corridor while they did blood tests. Back in November when we were still renovating the house, a water tank fell on his foot and his toenail went quite black. To his credit he just carried on as though nothing had happened and we thought little more of it until he dropped a log on it last week – and although the air went temporarily blue as a vast amount of expletives could be heard, the moment passed without further incident. However, it appears that the wayward piece of oak caused a septic shock that triggered the infection. So, ten days later, he is still on crutches and unable to drive or do anything at all. Garden projects lie half-finished.

Just as I thought that not a lot else could go wrong, Izzi called me from university in the UK; “Mama, I’ve got an awful sore throat and cough, and I’m flying to Milan tomorrow and the doctor is closed! Help!”. My advice was simple – drink lots of lemon juice and honey, eat raw garlic and suck on raw ginger. There was little else I could do from a few hundred miles away in France and I crossed my fingers it would do the trick.

So March finally passed and I welcomed April, quite literally rushed off my feet. So many extra things to do with Roddy unable to move or drive. The plum blossom is already over and in it’s place delicate green leaves and the beginnings of fruit. The cherry now takes pride of place in the garden, it’s magnificent blossom overshadows everything else.

However, April brought the ants. I came into the kitchen one morning last week to find a trail of dark little specks, speeding across the floor like a tide of black dust, creeping imperceptibly under the dishwasher. But there was no time to worry about that until I had delivered the children on-time to their respective schools! With a much needed cup of coffee on my return, chickens let out and fed, kittens fed and husband fed, further investigation revealed a music-festival gathering under the dishwasher, writhing and dancing to some invisible beat. After pulling the machine half-out, I realized that most of the ants in the Charente-Maritime were actually jamming away under there. I hurried off to our local garden/agricultural centre, Gamm Vert, the place where you can buy everything – plants, clothing, chicken-feed, ham, cognac, lawn mowers, paint and even an oven, and searched for some ant repellent. But what did I find on the shelves? Not much choice of ant poison, but a huge new seasonal selection of snake-repellents! Lots of the stuff. I thought I had left Florida and snakes behind, I HATE snakes, and now, if I believed what I read on the shelves, my perfect garden was about to be invaded by all of Europe’s finest venemous varieties. Through my tears I could see shelf after shelf of products of various designs for repelling the mighty asp, the dreaded viper, and the lesser spotted cow-gobbler, or something. Quietly sobbing I remembered the ant-bait just in time, and drove home thinking dark thoughts about reptilian defenses in the garden.

Of course when I spoke to our neighbour that afternoon he told me that there were indeed snakes, but – not too many would be seen, if indeed any at all. They were small, and the cats would keep them away as well. “Just don’t put your hand in any cracks in old walls” he said!

So ants dealt with, snake fears almost allayed, it was time to learn how to use the chainsaw. Our barn is stacked full of wood but most of it is cut to metre long lengths and I had to halve them to fit our fireplace. Roddy is normally in charge of this programme, but he was still in his chair and we needed some wood. I am quite amused that despite being a farmer’s daughter and growing up on a farm I had never used a chainsaw, but after Roddy dutifully hobbled out and showed me how to mix fuel and start the noisy beast, I now know how to cut firewood. He did not have the courage to watch me cut my leg off and hobbled away once he thought I had things under control.

Easter arrived and along with it came stunning weather; clear blue skies and some much welcomed sunshine. I set off for Bordeaux airport with Millie to pick up Izzi who was flying in from Milan, thankfully feeling much better. So excited at the thought of having all five children together again. She had been staying with a university friend whose family lives in Milan as she has two weeks Spring Break. It was a stunning drive down to Bordeaux as it was Easter Day and the roads were quite empty. Millie told me all about her forthcoming school-trip the following year to China. She will be starting Lycée this September, the equivalent of the last three years of High School in the USA, and she has decided on Chinese as her third foreign language choice, alongside Spanish and English. Of course for her English is the easy foreign language she doesn’t have to even think about (an easy pass as we call it). Jack, who is 13 in a couple of weeks time, will be going to the Alps with the school next winter for a week learning how to dog-sleigh. A skill I doubt he will need in life but immense fun! The two youngest girls are off on a big school-trip on Thursday and have had not one but two parties this Easter weekend. I have decided I want to go back to being a student; I don’t remember it being half as much fun when I was at school!

I rarely go to Bordeaux as the airport is an hour and forty minutes south of us and normally everyone flies into La Rochelle. However, on such a beautiful day it was fun to see new scenery, and with so many vineyards Millie and I had great fun differentiating the organic ones from those using endless pesticides – the latter have grass around the roots which is an incongruous shade of orange. As I love driving, the time flew past and Millie even managed to take a photo of the River Dordogne as we crossed it at 70kph!

Easter Monday, I managed to spend a couple of hours in the garden in the afternoon in some easterly sunshine, attacking the weeds that seemed to have sprung up overnight with the warmer weather; the chickens helped as always when Fritz would leave them alone (note to self : spring is definitely in the air), or perhaps they hindered; either way I enjoy their company!

I hate it when the children go back to school even after just a long weekend at home; it is always so much fun but suddenly today the house was silent again. To cheer myself up I stopped on the way back from dropping them off to take some quick photos of the beautiful weeping willow outside Pont l’Abbe, it really is quite fantastic in the early morning sunshine.

The daffodils along the river beside the willow will soon be past their best; it seems like only yesterday we were so excited to see the first signs of spring and now already we are moving on to the next stage.

Everywhere the blackthorn is in flower, delicate little white petals which bely the sharp prickly thorns they hide. I have never seen so much blackthorn; every hedgerow is a sea of white, mile upon mile of surf surging up out of the ditches, its spume blowing across the roads with every gust of the breeze. There are plenty of old folklore tales about blackthorn; in autumn it bears the sloe fruit, of course, and this year we will be ready with empty bottles and some gin or vodka. If there is an abundance of fruit, which with so many flowers this spring might suggest, it is said it will be a harsh winter – what my Father used to call “a blackthorn winter”. But still I can’t start thinking about next winter yet, we have only just said goodbye to this one. Still I learnt to use a chainsaw! I wonder if it will be effective on the snakes !!!

April 7, 2015April 7, 2015 by ourfrenchoasis

THE SUMMER KITCHEN, PAST AND PRESENT

It’s that time of year when I am bursting with energy! I have so many ideas for the garden, for the outbuildings, and for this and that, that there are never enough hours in the day nor enough hands to help. I have far too many projects on the go in my mind. I want to be outside working on the vegetable garden, planting, sowing, and weeding. I mowed the lawns for the first time this week, just a gentle little haircut but they look so much better. I turned the mower off with just the smallest part left to cut, so I could hear what Mr H was saying to me as he passed, then I turned the key to get going again and nothing; the motor was silent, not even a cough or splutter. We pushed it back under cover in the barn and now there is another job I have to do – to phone the local Gamm Vert (garden and farming supply store) and ask them to come out and have a look at it. The annoying thing is they had only just returned it from it’s winter service with its blades sharpened, a new spark plug and raring to go!

Amongst my many projects is the summer kitchen and for this I would welcome your advice.

The summer kitchen was one of the things I fell in love with when I first saw the house. It is a small little outbuilding dating from 1800, the same age as the main house. It sits just a little way down the garden and used to be the original laundry. It has two ancient stone troughs outside and in the summer the wisteria frames one wall and the climbing roses trail up another. There are self-seeded hollyhocks growing in the corners and, just to make it perfect, an abundance of little wild strawberries grow outside the door. It couldn’t be a more perfect place to relax on warm sunny days.

The family who lived here before us bought the house in the 1930’s. They were from Paris; Monsieur was French and Madame was British, and this was to be their summer residence. Alas, WWII broke out and they moved here permanently with their children as it was much safer than living in the capital. Monsieur did a lot of work for the French and British governments and the street on which the house stands is now named after him. With the house, we purchased a couple of items of furniture, big heavy items that were difficult to move. One of these items was a desk; the desk at which so much of the important work that merited the naming of the street was written. Mr H uses this very same desk today. During the war years Monsieur spent much of his time away in London and the running of the house was left to Madame, she turned all of the land into kitchen gardens and orchards.

We actually bought the house from their grandson, now in his 60’s and also based in Paris. He told us he can remember, as a child, his grandmother washing clothes in the summer kitchen every Monday. When one looks closer at the little old building it is easy to see that it was indeed the laundry. The vast well is right outside. Inside there is the original lead pipework and huge wheel that drew the water up. The wheel is no longer in use. There is also an equally archaic tank which holds the water as it is drawn from the well. The original electrics are still in place and were indeed being used when we bought the house; these were not even earthed, so we had the wiring completely replaced, with new sockets, new switches, new parts – all to be on the safe side!!! However, the system is still the same; turn it on and wait for the pressure to build up in the tank, at which point you can then draw water. This fabulous old system still feeds outdoor taps and a network of irrigation points for the garden.

There is also a large open fireplace which was completely rebuilt a decade or so ago and which produces plenty of heat; of course this would have been vital for heating the water for washing clothes. When it was rebuilt it was done so very much with outdoor summer cooking in mind, and was used every summer by the previous owners. We did exactly the same last summer when we arrived while rebuilding the kitchen – it was very novel, spiders and all, though a tad inconvenient when the heavens opened!

The old cobbles on the floor are the original stones, over 200 years old, they are utterly beautiful, worn smooth and polished from centuries of use.

The roof timbers have all been replaced but the builders kept the original style. As we now have safe wiring and electrics in place I am on the hunt for a vintage, very simple chandelier to hang from the middle section. Nothing elaborate or fancy, but we do need lighting, and I think this would be the most effective.

The ceiling, as you can see, has at some stage been insulated. We need to cover this, but we are still not sure what with. We don’t want to add modern plasterboard or dry wall; it would look out of place. But we do need to do something to cover up the ugly insulation and to hold it in situ, and this is where I would love to hear your thoughts on just what to use; it has to be simple and in keeping with the building. Likewise with the walls, would you paint or leave totally untouched? At the moment my thoughts are to give the parts that are rough plastered a simple whitewash and leave the exposed stonework. I would really welcome any comments you might have.

I hope in a couple of months I can share with you the finished summer kitchen, still keeping it’s old charm but very quietly tidied up.

March 26, 2015March 26, 2015 by ourfrenchoasis

WHERE THE ROAD TAKES US

When I was little there was nothing I loved more than exploring around the family farm of my childhood; on my pony, far off the beaten track, it didn’t really matter where I went. But an unknown lane or a tiny path I had not previously seen meant one thing and one thing only to my inquisitive mind; where would I end up? And when my grandparents came to stay, they would always take my sister and I out for a drive in my grandfather’s pride and joy, his beautiful vintage Rover. Back in those days in England, it was the era of the Sunday afternoon drive, a bone of contention for anyone local and in a hurry for Sunday afternoon drivers slowly cruised along, always looking this way and that with little regard for other traffic. We would join this group playing our favourite game, ‘Left or Right’; at each junction we came to we took it in turns to call which way to go and my grandfather would duly oblige. Frequently we had no idea where we would end up but that was what made it so special, not knowing what we would come across around the next corner.

Earlier this week, my husband and I did just the same one morning. Having deliberately cleared our desks the night before, we quickly grabbed a cup of coffee and our cameras and jumped in the car on a little exploratory trip after dropping the children off at school. We truly didn’t know where we were going as we headed off into the country, beetling down tiny narrow lanes we had never driven before. All we knew was that the sky was the most perfect blue, the sun was shining and it was a beautiful early spring day; this post is about some of the places we discovered all within half an hour of our house!

The roads got smaller and we found tiny hamlets we never knew existed; we came upon villages that we had previously seen signposted but we had never visited.

On our travels, we came across the most fascinating sign below, proudly announcing the entrance to a village without pesticides. We had never seen such a sign and it more than peaked our interest. As we’re really not fond of the use of pesticides and chemicals ourselves we wanted to know more. Now, what many of you may not know is that every town and village in France has a Mayor (or Mayoress), even if sometimes the Mayor is in charge of two small villages close together. And in each village, the local Mairie will be open for a few hours a day; even if the Mayor himself is not there, the Mayor’s assistant will be, and they are always a fountain of all knowledge. So, having seen this sign, we found the village’s Mairie and went inside to find out exactly what this meant.

It turned out that since 2007 every community in the Poitou-Charentes region has had an invitation to become part of a movement called ‘Terre Saine’ – a movement dedicated to the voluntary removal of as many pesticides in the countryside as possible. We cannot wait to return in summer for we know the hedgerows will be full of tiny wild flowers, the trees will be covered in leaves, and the blackberries growing wild will be free of chemicals. Armed with this new found knowledge we continued our little adventure,

we spied a ruin in the distance which led us even deeper into the unknown as we tried to find it.

When we finally tracked down the crumbling edifice we found a small information board that let us know that this was ‘La Tour de Broue’. The tower pictured is all that is left of an ancient 11th century fort, situated 27 meters high on a hill that once had the Golfe de Brouage lapping saltwater at its feet each high tide. Designed to give protection and strength to the workers in the fledgling salt industry of that time, it was abandoned in the 18th century as the sea retreated, forming the final part of the vast complex of marais – the marshlands that are a part of the Charente-Maritime’s rich history. Today only a scattering of ravens haunt it’s lonely ruins, a grim reminder perhaps of when death and desolation was part and parcel for the inhabitants of this rough but stunning countryside.

I hope you have enjoyed exploring with me and have a fabulous week.

March 19, 2015 by ourfrenchoasis

THE MAGNIFIQUE MARAIS – “THE GOOD LIFE FRANCE”

Many thanks to “The Good Life France” for publishing my first article in their online newsletter.

If you feel like joining me on our bumbling adventures in French wildlife, take a read…

The Magnifique Marais Poitou Charentes

March 15, 2015March 15, 2015 by ourfrenchoasis