Books, baby and sunshine

While I was at book club yesterday the commune verge cutter came through the village.  Such a shame – all the lovely wild flowers are now no more.  I particularly miss the bluebells in amongst the grass, ragged robin, celandines, buttercups, dandelions and stitchwort.  It was the same when I lived in Cornwall when they cut slightly later in the year and chopped down all the foxgloves along our lane.  Have they no hearts these people?

We held the book club outside – I didn’t fancy sitting inside when it was so sunny, but after about 45 minutes the sun disappeared behind clouds and it became  distinctly chilly.  The book we were discussing was

 

 

this is a seriously long book at 612 pages and I had only managed to read up to page 350, so I spent a lot of the meeting with my fingers in my ears to avoid spoilers.  As far as I've read I don't feel it is the most exciting book I've read recently, but having invested my time for just over half the book I will continue with it to the end.  The consensus was that perhaps it lost something in the translation to English. 

 

This week I've also read a book my friend brought over with her "The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry" by Rachel Joyce. 

 

 

June thought it was brilliant so perhaps I was expecting something extraordinary.  I enjoyed it - it was certainly an interesting story - but it didn't move me in the way it had her.   While she was here she read one of my favourite books "The Best a Man Can Get" by John O'Farrell.  She - like me before her - was laughing out loud while reading it. 

 

After our sort out on the field last week, here is a section where we've put wood which needs sawing up for kindling and stacking in the woodsheds. 

 

There's still loads of stuff on the left behind the galvanised sheet which needs to be sorted and shifted.  I advertised some old brown plastic bread crates - you can just see them at the end of the galvanised sheet - and someone came to collect them on Saturday to use them for supporting jumps for their horses. 

 

 

Some more of the inside stuff was collected too - portable TV, paperbacks, empty jam jars etc,  so that's about it until I sort out some more things.  I am being such a good girl! 

 

Saturday was a glorious weather day here.  Wall to wall sunshine and bright blue skies.  I was determined to lie out in it and did.   When the nurse came and took blood from me yesterday morning she asked me where I'd been on holiday as I looked so brown!  Sunday was lovely until the afternoon when it all fell apart, but I did get another whole morning in the sun listening to two Archers omnibus podcasts on my laptop and reading my books.  So lovely to smell sunoil on my skin again - it seems so long since the sun has been here.

 

Here's a photo of Andy and Flick's new baby, Lucas.  He is so beautiful, his skin is just perfect and he seems a really content little chap.

 

 

I forgot last time to post this photo of June outside a Tattoo parlour in Pleurtuit last week.  Did she or didn't she?

 

 

Well, no she didn't - thank goodness!

 

Three things I like:

 

1.   Having a long awaited cuddle with Lucas.

2.   Finally getting into a swimmer and sunbathing all day.

3.   Holding the new baby chicks.

Visit from a dear friend, eggs and chicks

Nearly two weeks ago a very good friend from the 1960s, when we shared a house together, came to stay for a week.  The weather didn’t rally for us and it was unseasonably cold while she was here.  We did manage Lannion market in the sunshine

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

where Fish and Ships  (sic) were being advertised on the blackboard!  Just look at this gorgeous plate of olives on sale

 

 

 

but we spent most of the visit chatting in front of the woodburner each with a glass of red in our hands. 

The day I went to collect June from Dinard Airport, I went via my Bowls Club to deliver eggs and then to collect some things for sale on an expat website.  I meandered northwards and stumbled across Jugon les Lacs where there is a Brit run Charity Shop.  While I was browsing through the book section, an English couple came through the door and told the shopkeeper that they’d only come out to buy some eggs.  Jokingly he replied that they hadn’t yet started selling eggs.  I couldn’t resist.  I said “I do though – free range eggs” and they bought a dozen from me.  Since some horrid political tension at my Bowls Club some of the members, who used to play and also buy eggs from me, have not been coming and I had spare eggs in the Land Rover – so it was very fortuitous!

The weather is now beyond a joke, even if the sun is out the wind is bitter and I have to wear a fleece and scarf to do anything outside, particularly early morning and evening.  The runner bean plants which I had grown in the polytunnel and planted out ten days ago have all died and I have now had to start again with pots in the polytunnel again.  Other sown seeds in the raised outside veggie beds have simply found it too cold to germinate.  It’s Midsummer’s Day in twenty-seven day’s time – hardly believable!

The six blue Cream Legbar eggs which I had in the incubator only produced two chicks and when I cracked the others they were not fertilised.  I had popped three of my own hens’ eggs in there too and they all hatched giving me five chicks.

The chicks all went into the brooder and seemed fine but yesterday morning when I went in to feed and water them one was squashed flat and dead.  I suppose that the other four must have laid on her and suffocated her – such a shame.  I have another twelve blue eggs in the incubator now so hope I have more success with these.  Here are June and Gracie taking far too much interest in the incubator contents.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The first two chicks to be born were christened by June - June and Terry - although, of course, we have no idea what gender they are as they are ordinary hen chicks and not the colour sexed Cream Legbars.

 

The wisteria is out now and scenting the terrace with a beautiful perfume. 

The large flower bed is also getting fuller as the foliage takes off, in spite of the cold.  Primulas, ajuga and aquilegia are all out, surrounded by hundreds of mid-blue forget-me-knot flowers.  The azaleas are just breaking out of bud and the vine is romping along the house walls and covering them with lovely green leaves.  The roses are covered in buds and there should be a good show before too long.

 

 

It was nice having company for egg collecting and putting the animals to bed at night - I think June is a closet farmer's wife as soon she was feeding the ducks and hens and even managing to herd them into their houses for bed.

 

While she was here she sorted out some of the stuff from my glory hole storage room – brass things, lamps, horse brasses, table mats, a camera, vases and other china etc. etc. which I put on an expat website as giveaways and apart from five paintings these things have all been collected. In return I received two bottles of wine and a polythene tub of homemade mushroom soup. I have also sold a small portable television and given away carrier bags full of clean, empty jam jars to jam and pickle makers.  There’s still loads to go but at least it’s a start.  My worker and I have started clearing up the field too and having done one trip to the tip we now already have another trailer full.  Anyone who knows me realises that I have great difficulty in getting rid of things so I feel very proud of myself!

 

Ah - on the subject of my worker - his wife gave birth on Tuesday to a very beautiful baby boy.  I have had my first cuddle and he seems a contented little fellow whom they have named Lucas. 

 

Well - incredibly the sun is out now at 17.20hrs and it seems quite warm out there.  I am going to put on my fleece and read a few pages of my book out there accompanied by a mug of sweet, black coffee.

 

O - just one more photo - some of the baby goats on the roadside when we came back home one afternoon last week.

 

 

Three things I like:

 

1.   It's only eight weeks today for the due date of my granddaughter, Mia, I can't wait!

2.   I am beginning to get holiday bookings for the cottages alongside my house.

3.   Packing the first things into the campervan ready for my first night away in it.

Sunday lunch and Endurance Horse Race

Today was one of those days when it was difficult to choose what to do as there were so many things on offer.  My village, St André, was on the route of the horse endurance races – 20km and 40km – and at the next junction towards town horses and carriages were racing down the lanes.  There was a car boot sale at Duault where I have been promising myself I would go, a plant sale in Mael Carhaix and the market at Bon Repos.

Yesterday a friend of my son who is over in France at the moment, suggested that we have lunch together and I proposed that we should eat at the Café de l’Abbaye at Bon Repos so we could see the market too.  Although the temperature board at SuperU was showing 17°C there was a brisk, chilly wind and it was not the best day to sit outside the café watching the world go by so when S arrived we went inside to have lunch.  Afterwards we wandered around the Abbey de Bon Repos and took some photographs.

 

A bloom from a rhododendron and a novel way of storing empty wine bottles.

When I got back to the village the afternoon horse entrants were just starting to come through the village so I put a scarf and coat on and joined my neighbours watching them running up the lane to the calvaire.  The supporters were there with buckets of water for the horses to drink and bottles of water to pour over their necks to cool them down and refresh them.

 There were some very young competitors as well as the obviously experienced riders.

Once they had all come through we went down the lane to the next junction to watch the carriages coming towards us on the bend. 

 

 

Here are three generations of my lovely neighbour's family.

I love how when events like this happen everyone comes out to watch and there's such a good sense of community.  









Three things I like:

1.   Meeting friends unexpectedly while wandering around the market at Bon Repos.
2.   A very rare steak sandwich for supper with garlicky, mustardy mayo.
3.   Finding the runner bean plants I put in the ground yesterday haven't been attacked by slugs - yet!

Spring has sprung in St André - at last!

Spring has finally arrived here in St André and everywhere is bursting with green and with blooms.  There are just four bluebell plants in my lane which are quickly becoming hidden by the other verge growth of grass, dandelions, celandines etc. etc.

 

This is a bank outside my neighbour's house studded with primroses, muscari and forget-me-nots.

When I walked out to the animals this morning there was a toad at the back of the little flowerbed on the drive.  He was plump and looked in really good health in the shadowy bit at the back of the flowerbed.

Dandelions are everywhere brightening up the verges and field with their bright yellow flowers.  I am considering making wine with the blossom this year.  The first and last time I made dandelion wine was back on 7 May 1982, when I was pregnant with my first child.  I made it on the morning of the day I moved house while I was waiting for the removal lorry to arrive.  It smelt terrible while it was fermenting in the wine bin but tasted wonderful when it was ready to be drunk.




The rabbits have a couple of large handfuls of dandelion leaves and flowers everyday - they just love them.

This little white flower which seems to be one of the first wild flowers to bloom around here is Stellaria holostea  - Greater Stitchwort - and should have five pairs of  petals as in this first photograph.  However, just a few metres from this is the plant in the second photograph with only four pairs of petals  - a mutant has somehow been produced. 

One of my favourite trees, beech, which comes into leaf first along the lanes and I just love it's vibrant green airy leafed branches.

Here are bracken fronds unfurling - aren't they beautiful?

The horsechestnut leaves are dramatic against the blue skies we have finally started to enjoy.  I was beginning to think that blue skies were a figment of my imagination after the  very wet and grey winter.

Oil seed rape fields are brightening up the Breton landscape.  I love to come round a bend in the road and see these zingy crops.

Today, the bowls club I belong to are having a lunch at St Gilles Vieux Marché.  As I am still dressed in my scruffs from doing the animals this morning I think I had better go and shower and change.

Sorted and ready to go 

Three things I like:

1.   Friends expecting their second child, a boy, were told yesterday that if he hasn't arrived by Monday he will be induced, so not long now until my first cuddle to welcome a new life into my bit of the world.
2.   The wisteria well in bloom along the cottage walls in the garden - it looks so beautiful.
3.   Watching the incubating eggs turning automatically in their new incubator - I can't wait for the chicks to hatch out - around 20 May.