february – Widow plus woofs

Yup, it’s still February but there is nothing like flowers, friends and fair skies to put a spring in one’s step. And I’ve been blessed with all three this past few days. Admittedly, the beginning of last week had me to doing a passable impression of a moody teenager – one too many comments about yours truly’s character but all was thrown off as soon as the sun came out. That and Denis’ perfectly timed trip to the garden centre after I dropped my Giselle off at the Toyota emporium for the last time. I was a little sad to say goodbye to my speedy set of wheels, Mumo’s Renault hasn’t got the same vroom and is much lower to the ground which means any bump in the road slams your butt.

My Rav 4 hasn’t been the only one leaving the nest, brother Moth and nephew Louis have gone back to their respective dwellings although Louis will be back in a week or so – kid needed to catch up on his actual job, that being fixing pianos and church organs, instead of building staircases and sanding down floorboards. Callum thankfully is still in residence, putting in electrics and a vent in my bathroom. I’ve been busy painting the latter although my expertise in ceiling decor has resulted in a splatter effect on the tiles – I did cover everything but the blasted paint is very sneaky. I’d much rather be planting roses and finishing off the new flower ‘beds’ D and I created thanks to Abraham’s gift of a few bits of dried tree trunks from Le Jardin. Speaking of makeovers, we finally got a visit from the pool poseur so the bloody thing could be measured up for a new liner hopefully next month. He tells me it can only be installed if the weather gauge gets to 20 degrees which judging by the forecast isn’t going to be a problem.

At least the woofers don’t mind my apparently irksome inability to keep still for five seconds and I think, quite like my ‘over enthusiastic’ optimism as do most closest to me, including friends. So, I had a few over last night to dine Greek style. Even Mumo sampled a little of my cuisine – brave lady. We might have eaten too much, drunk our way through several vineyards and murdered a few Demis Roussos tunes but in the best company. Flowers, friends and fair skies – maybe February’s not that bad at all…

“Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” (Marcel Proust)

Considering it’s the shortest month of the year and we’ve only just got through the first week of it, why does February feel so interminably long? One can’t even blame the weather; the predicted snow fall this weekend never arrived and although one wakes most mornings to a covering of frost, the afternoons are in double digit degrees. Maybe the mood dump is down to the unpredictability of being not quite out of winter yet – there’s always a fear that anything you start outside may well be under several centimetres of the white stuff the next day. Still, on the plus side, the dawn runs are simply serene. I can see where I’m going for a start now that the sun gets up a little earlier and the terre has turned rock hard what with the morning chill.

It’s not like we haven’t been busy here either although there was a slight hiatus mid-week when Callum came down with a tummy bug which meant 48 hours stuck in a bathroom, Louis then changing places as soon as his cousin recovered. Luckily, I managed to avoid the queue – I’ve had enough to do sorting out tax stuff for my apartment in Montpelier. The French impôt system is, let’s just say, migraine-inducing. So in order to save the yearly search for a document I don’t remember seeing or one I did and just filed in some dusty corner of a kitchen cupboard, I’m going to sell the place.

Speaking of selling, I’ve been busy photographing all my finished bits of furniture so they can be put online – Callum has promised to sort that out and bring me in some centimes. And of course, having cleared a small part of the workshop, I found a few more sorry souls to fiddle around with. One is a really rather lovely Gothic-style chair which I’m going to keep for myself – Dracula is my favourite book. Restoring such a beautiful piece of history isn’t the only reason why I’ll be garage-side for a while, tomorrow I say goodbye to Giselle as she returns to Toyota and I get a healthy bump to my bank account. As much as I love her speed, I just don’t use her that often and I’m always nervous of getting her pranged (the gate has been behaving of late). There’s enough cars and vans in the driveway for me to use until I find something more suited to dog hair and dirt tracks.

In the meantime, there are some garden jobs that have to be done when one isn’t wielding sanding paper and washing copious amounts of dust down the shower drain- the potager has to be emptied and then turned over before the new season plantings go in. I have been reliably informed that my woeful excuse for winter veggies is not my fault, apparently everyone round here has had a problem with ‘size’. Ergo, all my new seedlings are going to stay in the serre until the month is out. Let’s hope the pleasantly smelling bay leaf and pepper deterrent keeps the ‘dormice’ (Denis also has a problem with sizing rodents) out of there til then. How long is it until Spring?…

“February is just plain malicious. It knows your defences are down.” (Katherine Paterson)