August Around the Vegetable Garden

A stroll around the vegetable garden during the month of August revealed the following sights; the flowers in our garden will follow in the next post.

The artichoke that did not get eaten!!

Young chard

Celery

 Aubergine (Egg fruit/plant)

 Green beans

Baby beetroot

 Young cabbage

 Red hot (I know from experience) chillies

 Yellow courgettes (zucchini)

 Peppers

Pumpkins 

Tomatoes

Figs - always plentiful here

 Granny Smith apples - my favourite

Quinces by the dozen; I have a VERY healthy crop this year!! Removal of an old  plum tree close by a year ago has certainly encouraged growth. Now up to my ears in quince jam and jelly; we have passed some round to our neighbours and will look forward to eating our way through the rest during 2012!

The large ones above are, I think, even hotter than the little ones - Chilli sauce and jelly coming up....

Methinks I am going to be busy in the kitchen - quinces, figs, chillies etc, but so glad the late rains ( and a lot of work) have provided such a bountiful harvest.

Meeting Another Blogger and The Winner is.......

Early last week, I took a drive to see Roz and her husband Neil from Dirty Feet and Rubble in my Hair .  What a delightful couple!  Neil was busy building his workshop and what a magnificent job he is doing. So as not to disrupt the good work, we left him to it. Meanwhile Roz took me off to see the horses that she works with, and also one of her own. Having lived and breathed horses for many, many years of my life, it was such a pleasure to be back among them.  Roz had told me what great horses Friesians were and what fantastic temperaments they have; how right she was - I have never seen such friendly horses. So much so, that it was difficult to take photos.  They just wanted to have a fuss made of them.  It is a breed that I have not encountered before, having worked in racing stables. I only had thoroughbreds in my care and most of my show jumpers were ex race horses.

I managed to catch these three as they came rushing across the paddock to meet us.

I am sure Roz will correct me if I am wrong, but here she is (I think) with with her own Friesian on the left.  As all the Friesians are black, I was getting a bit confused as to which was which!  The Chestnut is about the same age and is there for company.

The two youngest ones to be born; I love their curly coats, which sadly they will grow out of!

and with their Mums.

I could not resist taking a photo of this family on the farm. They are a very small breed and these little chaps are about the size of guinea pigs at the present time!! I would loved to have taken one home!!!

then there was this bunny who I suspect had made an escape from one of the runs; he was gorgeous with his long floppy ears.

Oops I digress, I went to see Roz and the horses!  In the evening, Roz and her friends were practicing for a musical ride, which is coming up quite soon.  I went along to watch and to see the Friesians at work.  I gather that they make fantastic carriage horses and that they are excellent at dressage.  I was also very interested to hear that the South African Police have recently acquired a number of Friesians  to work with, because of their amazing temperaments.

Roz showing the paces; just look at that beautiful view behind her.

The riders concentrating hard. The horse on the left is a young stallion and although he was very full of himself, he behaved impeccably.

I think that there should be 8 riders in the full ride, but 2 were missing on the evening I was there. Here are the four Friesians together afterwards.  Roz second from the right.

Thanks Roz for a fantastic day and taking the trouble to guide me all over the place.  It was so good to be back with horses again after a long spell away.   

AND

The winner of the giveaway is number 7 Dolly

Congratulations Dolly, I will be emailing you and the jewellery will be winging its way to you quite soon.

Going, Going, Gone!

At the bottom of our garden, we had a beautiful cedar tree; on returning to France this year in April, we noticed that it was not looking very happy and within two months, it was very definitely dead and black.  Plans had to be made to remove it, but as it was about 17 metres (55 feet) high, and it was surrounded by hedges and electric cables on two sides and my shrubs on the other two sides, it was work for professionals.   The local neighbour was happy to bring it down for us, but we were worried that if something should go wrong, we didn't want to be the ones paying to sort it it!  We eventually found a  fairly local tree surgeon with excellent insurance and we felt much happier about going ahead with the job.  All photos can be enlarged with a simple click on them.

The tree before we started; you can see how little space there is around it.

The tree surgeon on his way up to fix ropes and anchors

The lower branches already off, and if you look carefully you can see the chipper machine 'spitting' out the chippings of smaller bits of wood which we did not require for fire wood.

Out on a limb

In more ways than one!

Getting there

Last bit ready and

going

with a perfect landing.

Putting some style into the tree stump

and the mushroom appears 

The large bits of trunk were put around the mushroom and now all I have to do is fill the centre with earth to make a raised garden.  This should look spectacular next year (I hope), when it is planted and has plenty of colour.

The stack of firewood to keep us going for winter.  We have been advised not to burn cedar on its own as the smoke is very tarry and clogs up the chimney, but we will use it with oak  of which we also have a pile.  The chimney is going to be cleaned this week, so winter here we come!

I would like to say thank you so much to Darren and his father who did all the hard work and left the garden in a spotless condition at the end of the day.  To anyone who needs their help, I highly recommend them and they can be contacted on their website at www.viennetreeservices.com   No, I don't make anything out of this! I just feel that their work was excellent, at a reasonable price and I am happy to make a recommendation. They work in Departments 86 Vienne, 16 Charente, 79 Deux-Sèvres and 17 Charente Maritime.

Don't forget the giveaway, see HERE to be drawn on the 24th August

The New Wall !

We bought our house in France in 2005 and the photo below is what the front of the house looked like at that stage.

In 2006, we stripped the walls of the house of the old moth-eaten plaster, as you can see below, to expose the beautiful stone. In a bygone age, people had applied plaster to the stone walls of their houses to demonstrate to their neighbours  their newfound wealth. We did the opposite!!

The shutters had received one coat of paint at the time of the photo below but you can clearly see what we thought was a solid gate and fence.

By 2010, solid it was not; strong winter winds and rain, together with too-short hinges and poorly seasoned supermarket timber used by the (now bankrupt) builder, had caused the gates to drop in the centre, so they didn't open properly. We had them replaced with new purpose made oak framed units, filled in with sequoia panels.  These should last a bit longer, we hope! See HERE

By early 2011, we had got fed up with trying to patch the fence, which the wind had blown over a couple of times in the intervening years.  The posts were rotten!

While Nigel was here in July, we removed the whole fence, and deposited the remains at the dump, which by this time was where it belonged!

At the end of July, we employed a local builder  who dug the trench

and put in the foundations.

At the beginning of August, the wall was started

and by the afternoon it was at full height, only one man doing all the work!

Almost there, only tidying up still to do.

Now compare this photo with the first one, what an improvement :-)

I apologise for the strange tint in the last picture, but the camera obviously couldn't cope with the  odd colour sky and a slight drizzle when I took this.

Nigel has not seen the wall in 'real life' yet, but I hope he will be as happy as I am when he gets here.

Don't forget the giveaway, see HERE to be drawn on the 24th August

Milestone: 200 Posts and another give-away!

I  have got a few good reasons for a give-away with this post!  Firstly, this is my 200th post; they seem to have gone by in a flash and I have really enjoyed writing them! Secondly, another birthday is just around the corner and I don't want to think where that time has gone!  Thirdly, this month sees our 30th wedding anniversary and what an amazing 30 years it has been.  Sadly, we will be  spending the day in different countries, but we can drink to each other over a video call on Skype. Celebrations will come later!  What would we have done without Skype during our long periods of separation? - life would have been even more difficult, so a big thanks to them!  I would like to say thank you so much to Nigel for a very happy 30 years,  I hope it will be very soon that we are together in France and separation  will be a thing of the past.  We have done so much together, but so much apart; retirement, hopefully, will be a long and happy period of togetherness.

I have made the choker, bracelet and earrings, shown below, to give away; all you have to do to win them is to be a Google follower of my blog and comment on this post. Easy!! I will then select the lucky winner in two weeks time with random.org and notify you all of the result.  The winner can then  provide me with their postal address  and I will send the package off!

I will finish this post with a few interesting statistics from the last 199 posts and my thanks to my loyal followers:-


All time history of page views = 26,890

Number of comments to date: 6,953


Blog with the most views = Mystery French classic car update 401 viewings
Second = Some bugs and insects around our Charente garden 205 viewings


Top 3  page views (by country) =
United Kingdom   6,245
United States      6,124
France                4,770


My blog has been viewed in 105 different countries; I am amazed and delighted but I think there are still another 60 countries out there which I must attract!!


At this milestone, my sincere thanks go to all my followers for their  dedicated interest and comments to date; however, the most viewings from one person, have  been made by my blogger friend Jean , so my thanks  and appreciation go especially to her. I hope I can continue to find and write about subjects which will continue to attract and interest my followers.


Good luck with the give-away competition!