garden antique for the children to inherit.

Blog 6 / March 2016

 

Although I blogged that the storks were back because Mike had heard the clatter they make one afternoon but they were not yet on the nest we watch and I was getting worried. Geneviève had mentioned it to her Brother who also lives in the village and he also sucked on his teeth and said, not good, they are late.  I was in the garden supervising, from the patio, Mike applying the first lawn cut and saw two storks in the air above me. I watched as they swooped off over Madame’s field next door and then up into the tree tops to settle on their annual Brevands summer location…Hooray they have arrived

On the subject of cutting the grass Mike became a little twitchy about getting out as soon as possible as the grass has continued to grow pretty much all winter in these ambient temperatures. Three days of dry weather and high winds gave him the window to get out and cut. The collection box came off my tractor as it is the better of all the machines we have and it was just a matter of getting his head down and getting around our 3 acres as best he could.

 

 

 

We call this type of cut, the worst we do, and nick name it, knife and fork job, but we know after doing this for the past 8 years it always recovers and there is no point getting upset or besides yourself because it will all look good by May when we want to spend time out here and invite friends to share our joy of the garden

 

 

 

We took advantage of this spell of dry weather and had a day of bonfire and hunted around in all our piles of things to get rid of and had a few hours of very satisfying rubbish burning.  All the buddleia cuttings went on and we even did a bit of spring weeding and put the dechete straight on the fire….fabulous.  Mike is taking down a whole hedge so that we can bring the house into the garden and lighting a fire then cutting the hedge so we can burn away the dechete as we go is a system we are quite liking. This garden was a farmer’s field when the previous owners lived here and they cut themselves off from this space with hedges and gates but we are feeling confident that we will stay here and are freeing ourselves from the years of differentiation and are going to cut trees and hedges so we can see the garden from the house and then we will build a conservatory so we can sit close to the house and enjoy the view.

 

For a housewife and value for money type of lady that I am, I was put into a bit of a tizz when my faithful Sebo vacuum cleaner stopped working.  I bought this Sebo in John Lewis in Reading when it was still called Heelas in 1997 and there has not been a day that it has let me down, until now. I did not hesitate to mention to Mike that he needed to mend it …..or else he would need to buy me the best cleaner on the market and you can’t get the best for anything less than 400 Euro these days.   In 30 minutes Mike had my Sebo apart and working as good as new so I celebrated in style by giving it a good clean, change the  filters and washed the hoses in and out and then went through the house like a housewife possessed…..and relieved that I may get a few more years out of this historic and wonderful machine.

 

 

Our 9 year old duck died this week after a short illness that we will call, Old age.  She was  one of the first two ducks we bought from the chicken and duck man at Carentan Market in 2007.  My Mum was staying with us a couple of weeks later and she bought two males to make the clutch of four and we have had them come and go ever since, but this last one had a jolly good innings and may I say a pretty lovely life.  One of our new male ducks found his wings and has flown off to greener fields so we are left with a happy clucking group of 4, and all is good on the pond.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And finally, I am sad to say that the 80 year old sweet pea seeds my mate Shirley gave me for my birthday in October did not germinate and I was left with a big dark pot where I imagined would be beautiful flowers. It was a bit of a long shot but well worth the effort because as a point of reference I picked the seeds from last season’s sweet peas and planted them at the same time.   I now have a hand full of plants already potted up waiting for some warmer weather to go out and give us a display.  I have kept the 1930’s seed envelope  and will put it in my year book so we will always have a garden antique for the children to inherit.