Bonjour!
Hope you had a good week.
I missed chatting to you last week, but I was rattling over cobblestones in Paris in a funky 2CV, visiting museums and exploring the city’s restaurants. I worked off the calories cycling and getting fit at the new Villages Nature Paris, a brand-new nature and holiday resort close to Disney World and the city centre and did a few other fun things (like learning to bake bread) that kept me away from my desk.
Did you miss me?!
I came back to weeds in the garden as high as me thanks to a bit of rain and a lot of sun which is odd in my part of France. My French friends in the south say I live in the “north pole” being in Pas de Calais. This year we seem to have switched round with more sun than the south. I’m not complaining, especially after last year’s deluge of rain, storms and giant hailstones. In fact, I made myself take a look this week at my once lovely greenhouse. It was smashed to pieces by freakily big hail stones in July last year and I haven’t had the heart to deal with it.
We bought the green house second hand on Ebay ten years ago. We had to dismantle it in someone’s garden in the UK, wrap all the glass bits in newspaper, save all the screws and rivets and number up numerous bits of metal frame. Then we drove it out to France and spent days putting it all back together which wasn’t easy I can tell you as it was two greenhouses joined in the middle! We didn’t break a single pane. The hailstones totally destroyed it. I’m determined to repair it one day, meanwhile I’ll enjoy the wild rasperries that have made the inside their home and are just starting to ripen.
Elsewhere in the garden everything is growing as well as it can with my Houdini-like chickens on the rampage. There’s a small core group who manage to find a way out of the pen whatever I do. And, they’re about to be joined by 10 ornamental chicken chicks, who’ve been in the nursery for the last few weeks but are big enough to go into the starter pen. I’ll pop some photos on Instagram later, they’re so sweet, they’ve got feathery legs!
Where ever you are, whatever the weather, I wish you a very bon weekend,
Bisous from France,
Janine
Editor
ps Photo is the lavender at the Abbaye de Senanque, Provence, where my friends tell me that the lavender has burst into glorious colour!
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