Witchy work

I feel I should title this blog “40 days and 40 nights” judging by the amount of rain we had for the first 4 days and 4 nights last week. And just as I was getting on top of all the water under the pool liner. Still, I would like to thank Sophy and Sean for their lovely gift on leaving our little part of France on Wednesday – blue skies and 30 degrees ensued. I’m back in my bikini once more and the woofers flopped out on the cool apartment tiles. The bloody pool is almost empty so with any luck and a few more days without pluie, Denis and I can finish the last bit of reparation around it’s drain and start refilling the vast abyss.

Having one hole to empty of water is one thing, finding a possible two or three in the front garden that may well hold the precious liquid is another altogether. We had a visit from the long-awaited water diviner this morning. Since finding out that quite a few of the neighbouring houses have ‘natural’ wells, I was pretty sure we must too since the underground source comes directly from the River Aude at the bottom of the village. Rashid (him who is partnered with D’s niece Stephanie) knew an old man in Preixan who is just that – a water diviner or sourcier. Along with his son, the Monsieur found not one but 5 locations in the garden, all pretty much where I thought they’d be. It’s fascinating to watch as the rods move about and then cross over each other when water is below and before you think it’s all hooplah, I had a go and got the same result. It is a really weird feeling when you get close to the ‘x’, a sort of mild buzz goes through your hands up up your arms. Well, for me anyway, Mumo didn’t feel a thing when she tried – must be the witch in me. Now all we have to do is get clearance from the Mayor and then a massive drill will make a great big hole 15 metres down. I’m leaving the buttering up to Denis, he and the afore-mentioned are great friends. Always helps.

What with all the spinach and carrots I’ve just planted out in the potager, I’m going to need a ‘free’ flow of eau. Yesterday evening I put all my little shoots in to their new home, not quite in a straight line as I had been instructed to do by you know who but I don’t suppose the veggies mind. In fact, the weird weather of late might give them a boost as it has for all the fruit trees – plums, apricots, the dreaded figs of course and grapes. Yes, for the first time since I put it in the ground three years ago, my grapevine is bursting with little bundles. Hardly enough to make a bottle of wine but hey, who knows? Domain Stewart may be the next chapter in my new life. Or maybe I’ll be the next great graffiti artist – I finally finished the tractor shed wall and hung up my beautiful wrought iron frames over my brush work. I was rather pleased with my efforts until Stephanie remarked that the paintings looked better with the frames than without.

Speaking of chapters, Sally editor has sent back the last lot and a note to say how good they were – high praise indeed as she usually covers most of my writings in red ink. A pat on the back is enough to drive me forward and finish the last four before the summer. Then, as opuses (or is opii?) go – I’ll leave both books to the hands of the experts and keep my fingers crossed. By that time, we might just have a well for me to make a wish…

“In time and with water everything changes.” ( Leonardo da Vinci)

Buckets and blow-outs

Last week started with a storm, followed by glorious sunny weather and ended with a power cut. And for most of that time, I’ve been ankle deep in water in what should be an empty swimming pool. I can’t even blame the rain because we’ve barely had a drop, nope this is down to water being under the liner rather than on top of it. I shall explain. Having sorted the most likely source of the leak i.e. in the pool staircase thanks to the ever-reliable Roy’s expertise, I pumped out the remaining third of green, slimy liquid out into the garden and set about cleaning the liner so we could refill the bloody thing. It was at this point I felt the ground move under my feet so to speak or rather, wave underneath me. The mystery of where the leak had put the water was now clear, under the liner. So I’ve had to loosen the drain cover to make a gap for the stuff to come out of, wait for the small area to fill up and then go in with a bucket – and I’m still schlepping the thing two days later. I wouldn’t mind so much if I didn’t have mountains of other work to do and that the weather has suddenly turned very cool and my toes are in permanent prune mode. I’m really really hoping I’ll finish this tedious travail by tomorrow so we can put the water back on the right side of the liner before putting the summer cover on and forgetting about the bloody thing until the end of next month.

Mind you, both Denis and I have had time between my buckets to cross a few more things off the diminishing ‘to-do’ list. He’s started on the pétanque ground – a sort of bowls game that’s very popular in these parts. And yes, D has made sure the sporting venue is placed well away from next-doors windows – he knows my technique well. It’s not an easy thing to create, the lack of decent rainfall has made the terrain rock-hard despite me emptying the algae-contents over Denis’ meticulously marked-out plot. As for me, I’m still finishing the tractor shed wall’s ‘art’ – you’ll see it when I’ve finished. Oh and I’ve completed Chapter Sixteen of the second opus which I’ll pop off to Sally editor tonight and then, if she doesn’t send everything back covered in red ink, I only have four more chapters to go. Well, for the first edit anyway.

As I mentioned at the beginning of today’s blog, we started and ended last week with what could have been party poopers. Easter Monday saw the annual Maybon (D’s family) gathering, the sun was out and the barbecue sizzled whilst the little ones played with snails on D’s front lawn. Poor molluscs couldn’t get away slow enough. That was until the skies above turned slate grey and the distant rumble of thunder brought everyone under cover. Thankfully, the impressive display of lightning and sheets of rain waited until the day was almost over – so French. One must get the meal over first. That being said, yesterday’s power cut almost put a stop to anyone having a bite to eat. I had just put the evening’s dinner in the oven, Saba and Roy were joining us and I had another little surprise for both them and Denis, when everything suddenly went pfft. That was at 2pm. Rouffiac didn’t see electricity again until 9 pm. But we are resourceful and were not about to let a tiny little thing like power stifle our soirée. Or my surprise from arriving. My wonderful friend Sophy (the one with a ‘y’ not an ‘i’) and her husband Sean joined us, having popped over to visit Carcassonne for a few days, bringing buckets of wine and cheese to fill the meagre table which wasn’t so meagre after the local pizza joint got its wattage working. The whole night spent in semi-darkness was such a riot that when the lights came back on, we turned them off. Life is never dull when you live in this little village tucked away somewhere in South-West France…

“Happiness is not the absence of problems, but the willingness to deal with them joyfully” (Jonathan Lockwood Huie)

The wheel of life

It’s been a week of catching up with old friends and sadly, the loss of a little one too. Willy, my tiny Roborovski hamster passed away quietly on Wednesday night. I can’t say we had a very tactile relationship in the almost 3 years we spent together but he knew my voice and I had gotten used to the monotonous sound of his exercise wheel squeaking throughout the sleepy hours. Denis and I buried him in the new flowerbed under the apartment frontage – his little house marking his grave. I didn’t add the wheel, his spirit might wake the neighbours.

Speaking of neighbours or should I say, the neighbourhood, everyone’s been out in their gardens over the past few days to soak up the glorious early Spring warmth. Mowers humming and beer caps popping as shorts were pulled out of drawer depths – they’ll be returned to their winter lodgings tomorrow however as we are set for a wet and windy week ahead. Just in time for the Easter Weekend. I have to keep reminding myself that March winds and April showers are to be expected and we still really need the rain but I do prefer flip flops to work boots. The short burst of sunshine however has given my tomatoes a boost – they may be tortoises but slow and steady they rise. And I managed to make a start on painting the tractor house wall, luckily I’m taller than D so he’s only got the top of the wall to do – unless I sneak out the ladder whilst he’s not looking. We’ve shot through our to-do list mind you, ambient temperatures and blue sky abundance tend to get the work done – I just wish I’d decided to the pool leak last Thursday instead of the one coming. Ah well, wetsuit it is.

And with the nights more on the cool than chilly side, I hosted a dinner party out on the terrace on Friday evening. Denis cooked a traditional chicken and olive stew and I provided the vegetarian tatin de tomates. Sixteen were very well-fed and equally, well drunk and all had a thoroughly good evening. I only wish that I could have had everyone over last night instead as my good friend and once grooming mentor arrived yesterday for a stopover on her way to her holiday home near Málaga in Spain. It’s been wonderful to see Heidi again after almost 9 years and to meet her stunning Standard Poodle Tiffany and travel gal pal Lindy. Naturally they’ve had a guided tour of Rouffiac d’Aude, which takes all of 15 minutes and a drive around Carcassonne to see La Cité and St-Hilaire to see the Abbaye de St-Hilaire. We didn’t do any actually walking around as Tiffany is a little on the shy side but the views seem to impress her human counterparts. I do love having visitors and being able to show off this little corner of France (subtle hint to all those who keep promising to pop in, ahem).

As mentioned, Easter is almost upon us and then it’ll be April and hopefully, Spring. This year seems to be whizzing by or perhaps I’m just getting old. I still have another 5 chapters to finish which I’d like to get done before the summer so I can put the wretched thing in the hands of the experts to refine so to speak. It’s not that I don’t like writing it, it’s just that I have itchy feet and want to get on with other projects – ones that don’t require so many brain cells. On the subject of itchy feet, Callum’s is much better he tells me so he’s off being touristy for a couple of weeks around Taz before getting back into the work mode. Life’s all about getting the right balance and getting off the hamster wheel…

““Friendship’s the wine of life.” ( Edward Young)

Pen the past and plant the future

I’ve pulled a fair few late-nighters over the past week and not because I’ve been frolicking into the wee hours. Nope, I glued myself to the laptop and worked my fingers to the bone tap tapping away at The Second Book. Deciding to focus for once on getting the opus finished before the summer is a great idea in principle but this means penning 3 chapters a month and that’s flipping hard work. Bringing up the past takes a toll on one’s emotions even if this time around, it’s about a new life in a country that I adore. I seem to have forgotten how difficult those early years here were, starting again without Tony by my side. But determination is my middle name and frankly, there are so many other projects to get done – ones I’ll actually enjoy doing.

Like pottering around my little serre for example or getting the huge party-dome down at Le Jardin redone so it’ll be ready for its grand opening in April. Abraham and I actually took some time out from our plots and went over to L’Horte to have a gander at what Nicolas and Severine have been up to. For those who aren’t regular blog readers, the two look after the land with their market garden enterprise as well as raise mini-goats and chickens. Anyway, I wanted to introduce Abraham as they are all in pretty much the same business which I did. I left Nicolas and Abraham to chat about all things green and good for you whilst I took my usual path down to the river to say hello to Pop and then poke around what remains of the surviving house. As you know, L’Horte has always been and always will be, one of the few places where I feel totally relaxed even if, like me what she once was and what she is now are strangers to each other. As I looked across the terrain and up towards the hills behind the property, a thought passed through my zoned-out brain. 4 years ago I was living in London, a city that wears stress like a second skin and now my home is surrounded by vines and beautiful views of the countryside. And even though I don’t have Tony to enjoy it with me, I’m lucky to have found Denis – my man who knows his onions when it comes to anything about his little piece of France.

And no he didn’t hand me over a bunch on Valentine’s day. Instead he bought me some heart-shaped goat’s cheese and a single rose – I’m easy to please when it comes to cheese. And he knows me well enough not to flatter me with a dozen red flowers, I prefer my flora to be in the ground not in a vase. Cut blossoms always remind me of chez Knollys being full of them after Tony died. And they die too, far too quickly. As romantic get-aways go, hiking though the forest looking for mushrooms that afternoon might not be too everyone’s taste but foraging for fungi is me to a tee. Except that we didn’t find any, not even the bad ones. The ground was dry and the moss practically non-existent – Denis blamed the local gangs for ripping the place apart but my money’s on the weather. Not nearly enough rain despite a couple of non-stop drip days during the last week and the thermometer is still doing see-saws – that afternoon it was over 20 degrees and blazing sunshine.

Despite the météo still making its mind up as to which month we are currently in, Denis and I made the brave decision to remove the winter wrap from my Mimosa tree. She’s flowering you see and needs to spread her limbs. She’s not the only one, most of the rest of the garden is too – far too early for most but D reckons they’re strong enough to survive a frost or three. I have kept Mimosa’s roots covered though as she isn’t old enough to brave a blizzard. Or anything else the tempestuous temperatures want throw at us before the summer and until that season arrives, I shall keep bouncing the balls of my fingers across the keyboard and try to remember where I am right now…

” It is not easy to walk alone in the country without musing upon something” (Charles Dickens)

Ripping up the rule book

Talking to my bestie, Rene, last week, our conversation meandering between who was doing what and plans for the year ahead when the subject of routine came up. Or changing routines to be more exact. Both being widows, we know what it’s like in those early days – having a steady hold on your daily life becomes habitual, a coping mechanism if you like. But it also becomes an unhealthy rut. It wasn’t until our phone call was finished that I realised that whilst Rene was already making changes to hers, varying the time of day she does her yoga sessions or walks her bundle of energy that is Pepper, I’m still sticking to more or less the same routine. Not the one I had in place when Tony first passed away, my life is somewhat different now but how I start my day definitely has an order to it. I may not make plans for the future other than what needs to be done in the garden or making deadlines for the Second Book but my ‘get up, let dogs out, change Mo and Coco’s nappies, workout, shower, smoothie then coffee’ is pretty much the same. And if something comes up that means changing the above, my mind gets befuddled. I’m not even sure I can blame my obsessive tendencies towards this little bit of regularity in my world on Tony, I think a lot of it comes from those London working days – my pea-size brain can’t forget the stress of Tuesdays and Thursdays as they were always my busiest ones. I still seem to rush around on those ones for no apparent reason whatsoever. But Rene is right, a change is good for the mental me so I’m making tiny steps – yesterday I made coffee before my shower.

And it didn’t stop there. The other evening and with book head stalled, I was watching a programme about celebs homes and thoughts of changing my living area around began exciting the synapses – there’s an inner interior designer in me although what it thinks it can do and what it actually does are two different things. I have to admit I’m very happy with the result although the woofers less so, it took Simi several days to find the water bowl I’d moved an inch away from its original spot although a sofa is a dog sofa no matter where it lands up. I found my old painting table in the garage so now I have a place to put all my pins and fabrics for upholstering which is just as well as I discovered on moving my renovated theatre sièges that I hadn’t finished the backs of them and my almost-finished purple velvet armchair looks perfect in place so I’m not going to sell it. I also moved the telescope out onto the terrace now that my nephew, Louis figured out the lens configuration although the nights are too flipping cold to stand out there peering at the stars above. Rene’s right, making little changes keeps the mind moving and now the writing muse is back in force and chapters flying off the keyboard.

Rustling up one’s routine however, might be the right thing for us mere mortals but not so much for Mother Nature. The weather is frankly bonkers at the moment and our poor terrain doesn’t know which season it’s in anymore. We’ve gone from sub-zero temperature to the high teens and back down again in one week. Hard as it is not to want to relish the warm sunshine on your face mid-winter but we need the frosty mornings. Or rather the trees do. Our apple and pear ones are starting their Spring buds when they really should be hibernating – Denis says we will have to cover the lot if we get a freeze now. Mind you on the plus side, we have had time to prepare the ground behind the pool house for my serre which arrived a couple of days ago and once we battle with the inevitably impossible to understand instructions, it’ll be up and ready for little seedlings. Abraham also finally arrived with his tractor to heave out the giant fig tree root in the tractor shed, which popped out with ease thanks to Denis’ constant watering around it and probably Sherman’s digging because he’s a dog, help. Next week, I’ll be over at Le Jardin (Abraham’s place) to learn all about market gardening as for him, the planting starts now – albeit on a much grander scale than my little 4×2 metre plot.

And planting, I have learnt, needs planning and organisation – right up my neural pathway. With the old compost construction (the one I built out of the interior remnants of the old chicken house) dismantled and its contents spread over the potager out of reach of woofers’ tummies, a new one and a water reservoir are on the list although the latter might be scratched if the weather stays dry for another week. It’s not as odd as it sounds. Rashid knows a diviner in Preixan who has promised to come by as long as it doesn’t rain – searching for a possible water source I’m told gets a bit confusing if its pouring down. Such rod-waving experts are hard to find but much in demand as their success rate is well-known and as quite a few of our neighbours have managed to bore down for the River Aude’s precious hydration, there is a high chance we have something running under our bit of Rouffiac. Naturally we will have to inform the Mayor if and when we find the precious liquid but since I’m drawing the village map for the panneau by our corner wall, I should be in his good books. And if the dear diviner does find the source, I might ask him to wander round the bloody pool as well – plugging leaky liners is one routine I could do without…

““The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.” (William Arthur Ward)