Distant thunder and bells

9 August 2016

We've been here for 10 days and it feels like weeks. 'Normal life' - whatever that means - has receded and it's hard to recall the details. Assuming you care to try.

It felt as if I was in shock the first couple of days, and not only because of jet lag. There was so much to take in, so many changes to absorb and examine. I felt buffeted by the delights of the barn and dépendance, and once again found myself stunned by the setting. The views and the peace continue to thrill me and a year between visits is just simply too long. The quiet cooing of doves, the drone of bees in the lavender, church bells and the roll of distant thunder. These are a few of my favourite things.

Location shot

The covered porch is fantastic. I'd been concerned that the addition might spoil the barn, cut down the light inside, look as if it had been tacked on...and wondered if the benefits of shade and shelter would be more than hypothetical. I shouldn't have worried: the porch looks as if it's been there forever, the size of the oak beams and the generous proportions say 'agricultural', rather than 'domestic', and the seasoned timbers marry well with the barn structure and dépendance.  The height of the roof is such that there is no loss of light inside, and the porch adds a very definite extra dimension, both visually and functionally: it's an extra room.

The porch frames the view

View from the kitchen window

Already enjoying the shade...

The rain chains need tweaking - the chain needs to drop vertically from the gutter. With this arrangement, some of the water simply misses the chain altogether!

Supersized beams 

Two old cast iron pots filled with sundry iron findings seem to be the obvious choice for the rain chain catchment, don't you agree? The chains are already losing their shiny patina.

The growth in the meadow below the barn is rampant

As I said, agricultural, not domestic... 

The growth of the meadows was a surprise - the grass was waist high! - and I felt that the area had to be more clearly defined as it was encroaching too closely on the trees, interfering with a) hanging the washing and b) lurking in the hammock. I didn't want to have to rely on John the gardener, so, during our first few days we managed to buy a second-hand blade tronsonneuse, which will help us keep control. I've already had a go at it and it's not as easy as I'd imagined. The blade keeps getting jammed with grass and the cutting-through-butter-with-a-hot-knife experience I'd envisaged was more like sweep-back-and-forth-again-and-again-stopping-frequently-to-clear-the-blade-while-making-little-progress. Photos to follow...

First project was to organise a cupboard for the shower room. The idea was to store the towels there, take the pressure off the storage upstairs, and clear the cleaning agents and mess from the recess behind the toilet. G put together a couple of high kitchen cupboards and we fixed some old handles that have been waiting for their moment. Funny how excited one can be to have a noo cupboard!

 

Wonder how long it'll stay so neat and tidy :)

Recess behind the downstairs toilet - with original tins found in the barn and meadow flowers

Next up - the kitchen project! Once G had put up the hotte above the fond de hotte, I began tiling the splash back...for which we chose a simple row of 10 x 20 cm matte white tiles. The little black things in the photos are spacers (croisillons).

Green tea is never far away

A double row for the sink splash back

Tilers' assistants don't come any more obliging

The first top cupboard!

Measure twice, cut once

Getting there...

 We collected friend M at Brive station and gave him barely enough time to shrug off the dust of a year in Spain before we put him to work. (Amazing that he came back, after the hard graft of last summer - you may recall that he and G moved a large pile of heavy rocks from A to B, pruned the fig tree, and M cleaned our windows while G gazed into the middle distance and sipped tea.)

Miserable craic

General bonhomie

Barn owner in customary supervisory rôle

Just look at that kitchen! Also, note the tiles with vertical slate 'features', ahem.

While the guys were busy on the kitchen, I spent some time weeding around the perimeter plants and removing the tall dock seed heads that were in worrisome abundance in the big meadow below the stone terrace. J-M says they will take over everything if we leave them alone. It was hot and tiring but satisfying work.

The heat yesterday reached a peak around 5pm, so we slid gratefully into the cool water of the pool, and spent some time lounging there, with beers and nibbles. And goosebumps. 

It's on a slope, hence the bulging oval shape. And the pool is distorted too :)

Daiquiris, anyone? 

France - it has everything for the discerning traveller

Fiji? You can keep it. 

Parallel universe

20 September 2015

It is; it really is.

G and I were away for a month of:

hard work (the alarm went off each morning!)
sultry heat (up to 40 degrees)
misty mornings (obscuring the valley)
long evenings (beers on the terrace)
stargazing (no city lights)
picnic lunches (Puy d'Yssandon our favourite spot)
decisions (kitchen, dépendance...)
gardening (planting, pruning...)
painting (shower room)
harvesting (our apples, peaches, figs...)
no internet or phone or TV (digital detox)
enjoying friendships (and making more)...
listening to turtledoves, owls, raptors (and tweety nameless others)...

Even Larry would have been impressed with our happiness scores.

And now to the photos. Pray do tarry, and let me bore you a while.

The terrace, and a perfect day for planting...

'Our' turtledove, which roosted noisily in the fig tree below each evening. 

I'm rather pleased with my terrace and new plantings...

We rearranged the furniture and like it better this way.

The dépendance, or monastic cell, which was friend M's home for a few nights, and from which he emerged beaming each morning...

...only to stagger the few paces to the hammock.

(Only kidding.) In fact, M and G worked like crazy pruning the fig tree (above left, M up the ladder; G in the tree) and hauling the huge biomass from one side of the garden to another.

No time for hammocks or holiday sloth.

Man with mission = happy man

More tree on the ground than standing upright now.

We all had our duties. I was on planting and weed-mat fatigues

The oleanders and other perimeter shrubs have really grown since last August...

An old carriage seat pressed into service as part of our Outdoor Living set.

Braving the cool-but-deadly shade of the walnut tree for lunch.

A personal favourite photo. Note how members of the Friends of la Fromagerie Society spend their time, while the landowner averts his gaze. No wonder numbers are dwindling.

Evening stroll - at about 10 pm.

Another attempt at an arty shot.

Stewed home-grown apples in birthday bowl :)

Small-but-perfect peaches ripened faster than we could eat them.

Beautiful-to-look-at pears too, but each one had a rotten core, for some unknown reason. Maybe the lack of PPPPesticides?

New plants all in - lavender, mesembryanthemum, gaura, rosemary, creeping grevillea...

Looking in from outside, the barn reminds me of a lantern.

Peaches, anyone?

It all feels like one...

Microgreens on every salad :)

Home-grown peach clafoutis

Warm summer evenings: every door and window open to catch the breeze. 

Pretty darn civilisée, if you ask me.

Lavender. I'm determined to have lavender.

And then, the activity levels really ramped up. Gregg and Tom came back on site to start on the bed platform in the dépendance. We'd deliberated long and hard about whether or not to go ahead with it. In the end, we decided to go for it, and make the dépendance a really useful space. 

And the view from the bed would be magic.

View from the bed...

The boys are back in town...

It's these little details that make Tom's work special.

It's great when it's all hands to the pumps and everyone has a project.

While G and T worked in the tiny dépendance, G began the long and fiddly task of building the kitchen cupboards, and I began to paint the shower room. The heat was intense, but the craic was good. And tea was in endless supply.

No more calm indoors, but it had to get worse to get better.

Cutting the solid beech counter top outside in the shade.

The A team - Tom, Brian and Gregg.

Tom and Gregg installed a single Chestnut plank under the A frame, to hide the concrete plinth. The beam was about 100 years old...

Close-up of the chestnut plank. It's beautiful.

Talk about inglorious fruit...a gift (of several) from the neighbour. They tasted fantastic.

Our figs were ripening at the rate of knots, and we ate them with home-made yoghurt for breakfast, for second breakfast, and warm-from-the-tree snacks at any time. 

Now for a fence, to mark our territory...We carefully measured and marked our official bornes...

...dug down through the impacted gravel and geotextile membrane to a goodly depth...

Concreted the post holders in and marked them to stop innocents tripping over them overnight.

Et voila! C'etait fini!

We had to leave enough room to drive in and out, of course.

Last August I ran out of time, but this time, I managed to finish the stone terrace with a lime/sand mix to deter weeds and further bed in the stones. It looked good!

Check out the three valiant little vines (with iron ring collars) on the terrace.

There are three little vines growing through the stones of the terrace, and they'll have to be trained and coerced to keep to the left of the shutters and door. I've put iron collars around them to stop them being trampled and forgotten.

I know, awkward.

The kitchen turned out to be a major project. G did a fantastic job.

...although clearly there were times when it all became too much.

Hire a hubby

It's coming along! Next time, the high cupboards will go in. 

 The bathroom was a complete pain to paint, as it's tiny and full of stuff already! The niche above the  toilet will be tidied up, promise, and the cavernous hole behind will be hidden, but all in good time.

The jury is out - is it sunflower-yellow, honey-yellow, or sable?

Starting to look almost established.

John (the gardener) came by and pruned the hazelnut tree to improve the already ridiculous view. He found that it had dwarfed a pear tree with a quince grafted to it. And he mowed the perimeter of the meadow areas that we had marked out with string. It looked great when he'd done.

Hazelnut going........

...going... 

...gone (well, lower, anyway). 

Petit, mais costaud :)

Les amis

Ah well. It all feels like a dream. 

À la prochaine....