Last post on painting - I promise

Walking Friday: 3.8km

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Last blog post about painting - you can have too much of a good thing!

Here's the southern elevation of the house before, during and after refinishing: 

The scaffolding riggers (combined age 122) were in their stride by the end and we knocked down the four full bays in under four hours.

I had a nasty attack of vertigo after we'd put up the scaffolding after so Barbara was responsible for all the painting of the top half of the wall and all the fiddly woodwork right at the top. Odd really as the top platform was only at about 5m, feels high to me but isn't really.

Before and after

Cycling Tuesday: 8.4km

Walking Wednesday: 3.8km

Cycling Friday: 8.4km

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A couple of pictures before and after the wall painting:

We were quite pleased with that!

Another Sunset ...

Walking Monday: 3.8km

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This post isn't about painting the house.

Back to another of my favourite subjects though, sunsets.

Here's tonight's one with the crescent moon visible:

Painting by numbers

Walking Monday:  3.8km

Cycling Tuesday: 8.7km

Swimming Tuesday: 1.25km

Walking Wednesday: 3.8km

Cycling Thursday: 8.4km

Walking Friday: 3.8km

Quite a triathlon of a week ...... 

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Progress on the gable end house painting:

High work first coat.

End of day one - first sizing coat on all of the wall.

Start of the top coat:

I had assumed that the wall was originally painted but as we worked our way over it I'm more and more inclined to the view that it has never been painted in sixty years as we found no trace of any previous paint finish. There's a certain grey streaked concrete finish that one can see on houses all over France that might be original unfinished concrete or may be very well weathered old paint - it's hard to tell. Certainly our west facing wall takes all the wind and winter rain and the concrete had become very porous so as soon as the rain came the wall was visibly wet. Now two coats of Dulux Weathershield later it should resist the water and allow the moisture in the wall to evaporate.

Up high

Walking Monday:  3.8km

Walking Tuesday: 3.9km

Swimming Tuesday: 1.5km

Walking Wednesday: 5.2km

Walking Thursday: 6.9km

Walking Friday: 3.8km

Swimming Friday: 1.25km

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Sometimes our work projects extend over quite some time. We started repainting the house in June and finished the North wall but really this was just a warm up for the higher south wall and the much higher gable end. And with the summer weather that's where it ended for a time.

So, with the combination of more than one week without visitors and the promise of a settled spell of weather we decided this week to get the brushes, rollers and paint out again. And, for the first time in two years the scaffolding has come out of storage. In the list of things we expected to be doing as a job after stopping work, being a scaffolding rigger was never one of them. Actually, when Barbara asked what someone who put up scaffolding was called I wasn't sure. A scaffolder, a scaffold erector or a rigger? We agreed on rigger.

Here's the gable end scaffolded:

When Gérard last swept our chimney (it's done by pushing the brush down from the top in France rather than from the fireplace as in the UK) he stood on top of the stack and said he could see the sea. I declined Gérard's kind offer to join him standing on the stack so I could see the sea too, as is well known (particularly to Gérard) I'm not good at heights but the view off the scaffold over the garden is quite good:

Not everything in the garden has grown so well ....

Walking Monday:  3.8km

Walking Tuesday:  3.9km

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I've used several blog posts this year to explain how well most of our fruit and vegetables have performed.

Most is an important word.

Here's a picture of our entire melon harvest for 2015:

As a clue it is on quite a small cutting board ......

A Peach of a Harvest

Walking Monday:   3.8km

Walking Tuesday:   3.9km

Swimming Tuesday: 1.15km

Walking Wednesday:  3.8km

Walking Thursday:  3.9km

Swimming Friday:  1.25km

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I'm not very good at keeping detailed records of our gardening and the crops we grow. Barbara's better at it and we work out our crop rotations from the diagrams she draws each year in the diary and the lists of varieties and sowing dates.

One thing that is clear however is that for most of our crops 2015 has been a record year. During September we had so many courgettes, beans and peaches that we put out a "Help Yourself" table and barrow at the end of the drive. I've not seen this anywhere else in France and it's fair to say that it was initially treated rather suspiciously by passers by, they did get the idea however and we got a couple of thank you notes and positive comments from neighbours.

It's hard to pick out individual highlights from the harvest but for sheer luxury picking perfectly ripe peaches from the old tree takes some considerable beating:

The tree had seen many better days before we took over and was split with a big section of rotten wood at the base of the trunk. It looked so likely not to last long that at one point Gérard suggested taking a graft off the remaining healthy part to replace it when it succumbed to the inevitable. Some frankly trial and error pruning with the help of a book and the need to reshape the tree to open up the view from the barn door didn't bode well but the tree reacted by producing plenty of healthy growth and a good crop of flowers in March. Favourable weather and plenty of insects set the crop well and warm weather followed by a damp August produced a massive crop - easily twice the quantity in any previous year.

Here's a sample of the crop, this is one day's picking:

We've frozen peaches, bottled peaches, made peach chutney, frozen more peaches, eaten a lot, cooked a lot, given many away to neighbours and we have a whole fridge full of fresh peaches slowly ripening. The concensus from neighbours Claudette, Sue and Nicole is that they are very high quality and have a great taste. We agree, of course.

Here's another day's harvest .....