Vingt-cinqieme anniversaire de mariage

It was our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary today - how did all that time pass?

It's been really hot today (31C) and the afternoon gradually subsided into a thundery, humid evening.
We did no special things today but this evening we had a barbeque and ate outside with a bottle of Limoux sparkling wine from our Pyrenean holiday.

The menu was:

Selle d'agneau (saddle of lamb) with rosemary and garlic
Baked potatoes
Green salad (lettuce, beetroot leaves, spinach, parsley and chives) with walnuts, garlic and shallots

Cholate éclair with raspberries and strawberries

The lamb came from a farm in Noyal Muzillac so less than 3km from us, the éclair 2km from the village bakery and everything else less than a hundred metres from our garden.

Low food miles :o)

Funny weather !

It's been a strange year weather-wise, warm and very dry in March, April and May, some very hot days in June then July and now the start of August have been pretty mixed and, in the last week, very wet and cool.

My diary tells me that it was warmer on 15th March than it was on 6th August ..... I was watering the fruit trees in March and hoping they weren't too wet in August.

Who needs a Minidigger ??

We had been considering hiring a minidigger for a weekend to pull out a hedge and dig some foundations for a retaining wall in the garden at a cost of about €300.

But Adam came to visit and, after I'd chainsawed out the top, he ripped out the hedge in two hours with his hands as part of his training programme for the new hockey season. Useful things children !

La Récolte at La Basse Cour

La Récolte = The Harvest for my English readers

One of the things that we wanted to do when we moved to France was to spend more time gardening and growing our own food. With some good results:

 

Our potager has been one of the most enjoyable things that we've done at the house this year and we've grown the following fruit and vegetables this year (with some French translations where I know them):

Dwarf French Beans                        Haricot Nain
Broad Beans                                   Haricot Rame
Runner Beans                                  Haricot Grimpante
Lettuce (Mixed Salad, Ashbrook)    Laitue
Carrot Early Nantes                        Carotte
Rocket                                            Roquette
Basil                                                Basilique
Coriander
Pepper (Jalapeno, Salad Bowl,        Poivron
  Long Red Marconi)
Beetroot                                          Betterave
Cornichon
Melon
Pumpkin                                          Potiron

Spring Onion
Spinach                                           Epinard
Courgette
Leek                                               Poiron
Tomato
Potato (Cara, Chérie)                      Pomme de Terre
Onion
Shalot                                             Eschalotte
Garlic                                             Ail

Strawberry                                     Fraise
Raspberry                                      Framboise
Black, White and Redcurrants        Cassis, groseiller
Gooseberries                                 Groseille a macqueraux
Blackberries                                  Murier

And, on the way shortly:

Peaches, Nectarines and Walnuts

 Water supplies have been important through the dry Spring:

 

And, this week, we have begun lifting our major crops of potatoes, this is about half of our early potatoes Chérie, around 45kg:

And red Shallots and rose Garlic:

Le Tour at Redon

One of the big events the blog missed during its absence was the arrival in Brittany of the Tour de France at Redon for a stage finish on 4th July.

We got to the town at about 2pm, there was great organisation and easy parking and we were able to walk the last three km of the course before taking up station on the inside of the final corner – a 90 degree left turn 500m from the finish opposite a fixed camera position. We unveiled our Union Flag; it was sunny and blisteringly hot and the crowds were huge, some Brits and Aussies around but mostly French locals. The caravane was the usual mad mixture of French brand advertising plus, for some reason, the sapeurs-pompiers in three cars advertising the jobs they had available. 

Here's a box of salted snacks on wheels ....... very French !

 

 Following the excitable commentary in French on the loudspeakers was a challenge but I managed to get the story of the breakaway that was charged down by HTC, the excitement in the crowd mounted as the last gendarmes roared through and then the TV helicopters came into view and finally a vast roar from the crowd as a blur of cyclists shot past riding unbelievably quickly. You may have seen the coverage – this was the stage where Mark Cavendish nearly came off on the last (our) corner and trailed in fifth, Tyler Farrar won for Garmin and the US on the 4^th July and a Cofidis rider did a spectacular somersault 10m away from us (we never saw it in the melee). It was chaotic on the course afterwards and, although we got the result on the loudspeakers it was only afterwards that we pieced together the story of what happened via the ITV4 coverage although, despite the camera shot panning across us and going through frame by frame, the speed was so great you can't see us or the flag ...... :o(

Anyway here are some of our pictures:

Geraint Thomas leading the peloton into the final corner trying to set up the win for Edvard Boasen-Hagen of Sky

 

Garmin’s leadout team bringing Farrar through, Cav just visible on the right

Cav with Boasen Hagen on his left and Thor Husovd in yellow

Team Sky car – our Union Flag got a wave from the bus driver and one of the other team cars stopped off to give us a drinks bottle

France got really excited when Thomas Voeckler held yellow right into the Alps but another year passes without a French TDF winner …..

La Basse Cour – One Year On

I realised this week that it’s one year since I piled the cats, the Dyson and too many things that had escaped the removal van into the Honda and headed off to Portsmouth to follow Barbara to La Basse Cour and our new life in France. The cats have done pretty well out of it, an endless supply of mice, loads of sunny stones to lie around on and almost limitless fields and hedges to hunt in. And we’ve done pretty well too.

Adam and his fiancée Charlotte came over this week to stay for their visit since last summer - when they were helping us fix the ceiling above the stairs – and were amazed at the changes and difference. When you live with something day in and day out it’s sometimes hard to see the overall picture but compared to a year ago the house now has two bathrooms, walls, ceilings, floors, tiles, doors, a fire and is really rather a nice place to live. They saw all that and reminded us how much we’d achieved in the year. The weather has been exceptional too since they arrived and we’ve declared a holiday for ourselves :o)

The blog has suffered a three month hiatus – no excuses for that except that it seems a lot easier to write regularly when it’s not light until 11pm and there’s not so much to do in the garden. I’ll keep things up to date from here and try to spend a bit of time catching up on the things that have happened since April.