It’s been quiet here where I am. Really quiet. To the point where the main excitement was a giant mole somehow braking through our stone-covered courtyard. I noticed the cats were sitting mesmerised watching the stones shake and at first I thought perhaps it was a mini earthquake. Mark and I sat with the cats for ages, fixating on the ripples in the ground before rescuing the mole which was the biggest we’ve ever seen. We took him down to the bottom of the garden and released him into the field where Thierry’s cows live and within seconds his powerful paws had dug into the soft soil and he had gone.
Later in the week, we were sat in Claudette’s kitchen with a cup of her famously strong, keep-you-awake-for-a-week, coffee, discussing when to cut back the laurel and elderflower trees I’d planted along the hedge that runs between our gardens and which, with the huge rainfall we’ve had, have grown far too tall.
Jean-Claude was distracted, looking out the kitchen window and muttering away to himself.
‘Merde… that damn mole, he is tormenting me’ he said. ‘He is digging bigger holes than ever before, he must be a giant. I’ve never seen such big holes – do you have them too?’ he asked hopefully since he always thinks that moles are targeting his garden more than ours.
No, we said truthfully but not daring to look at each other, we don’t currently have any giant moles in our garden.
‘He’ll be out there all day now’ said Claudette as Jean-Claude grabbed an umbrella and dragged one of her firm-seated kitchen chairs out the door, ‘he’ll be happy as a poisson dans l’eau’ (a fish in water) which was totally appropriate since it had started raining again. ‘He never catches them but he believes he will, he’ll daydream out there, watch the wild birds, sniff the blossom and listen to the chickens clucking. Sometimes, it’s the little things in life that make people happy.’
As they say, every cloud has a silver lining!
Bisous and bon weekend from my little pigsty where it is sunny in between bouts of sogginess…
Janine
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Janine Marsh is Author of My Good Life in France: In Pursuit of the Rural Dream – ebook, print & audio, on Amazon everywhere & all good bookshops online, and My Four Seasons in France: A Year of the Good Life
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