Two years before the mast...

 15 November 2022

...which title has no particular relevance, but it HAS been two years since I posted on here, so that glancing connection will have to do, me hearties, aargh.

COVID. Hmm. Yes. Travel bans. Travel restrictions. No flights. Few flights. Expensive flights. Masks on, masks off. Vaccinations. More vaccinations. And then the rather dizzying official push to Get On With Life (also known as Ignore the Lurking Lurgy). It's been a time, and we've emerged, somewhat battle weary.

With no friendly visitations by much-missed friend C  - with his usual top-up of local goings on and gossip, bulletin of things needing attention, or not - to look forward to, we've had to rely on the erratic communication with local friend F (of Moulin Bleu) and neighbour L to keep us in the loop. And then there's our paysagiste, who never fails to send through invoices, though he miraculously seems to avoid being detected by our CCTV. Hmm. Even his before-and-after photos are suspiciously similar each time we manage to extract them from him by way of proof. We must have Far Enough Away Not to Be a Nuisance stamped on our foreheads (FEA on mine; NtBaN on G's). It's uncomfortable, I can tell you.

In a happier development, we have had the huge assistance of Frank and team, who have from time to time descended on the garden like army ants, and taken control of it. The pruning, weeding, munching side of it, that is, leaving Guillaume (and his Invisible Cloak) to keep the grass trimmed. It's been a not-inconsiderable expense, but willingly borne, given our temporary inability to visit and sort the garden out ourselves.

So, for our first visit to La Fromagerie in 3 years, we'd originally planned a month in the Autumn (October, maybe) but, for a number of reasons, found ourselves squeezing in a mini-trip slap bang in the middle of la canicule in August. Temps in the mid- to high thirties, day after day, that kind of thing, and night-time temps in the sticky high twenties. For the first time ever, we had engaged a cleaner to prepare for our arrival, and boy, was that a good idea. When she WhatsApp videoed us as she opened the front door, and the floor was covered - COVERED - in dead flies, we knew we'd be incredibly grateful for the luxury of a clean barn to welcome us. And we were right. The place was clean, the bed was made with fresh-smelling linen. It felt so welcoming, after our arduous journey.

We lucked out, this time, since we hired an electric car, which proved cheaper than petrol/diesel hire  and was a delight to drive. Charging was a doddle - we simply hooked it up, through the window, to the power point in the dépendance, and it charged up happily overnight. Range was a bit limited, but we weren't planning any side trips, so what did it matter? 

Needless to say, we spent pretty much all day, every day pruning, hacking, taming and rediscovering the garden beneath the jungle that had grown up around the barn, as in all good fairy tales. We deposited mounds and mounds of vego waste (carefully encased in huge Big Mat bags to preserve our very urban hire car) at the local déchetterie. When the heat became altogether too intense, late afternoon, G would repair to the cool interior of the barn to read and listen to music, leaving his ever-restless wife working outside, albeit at reduced pace. 

It wasn't all gardening gardening, though; we had the time and pleasure to meet up with friends F and I, B and W, R and R over lunch, tea, beer, etc, and we spent one very happy evening at St Robert with F and I, enjoying the reflected warmth of the sun-soaked stone (and cold aperitifs) in that extraordinarily pretty little village. A large tarte aux framboises made a brief appearance on my birthday (and naturally, national public holiday), and we enjoyed the simple delights of local produce gifts from our neighbour J-M: freshly dug potatoes, still-warm large tomatoes, grapes and plums.

The highlight of the visit was the long-anticipated visit by our dear Croatian friend, A, who, with his now-deceased wife Z, has been a staunch supporter of our folly from the get go, and now enjoys special lifetime visitation privileges. Friend A got stuck in and helped prune and drag vego and generally cheerlead, while managing to suppress his natural disappointment that his visit to rural France had somehow morphed into a Workaway gig. What a rare and precious gem he is.

Our pergola was groaning under the old vines that had grown hugely since our last visit. Other plants (glycine, more vines and chèvrefeuille), newly planted three years ago, had taken full advantage of their sunny aspect and the structure of the pergola uprights and were well underway. In fact, though the pergola was yet to be covered by the creepers - there was a gap in the centre - the afternoon heat on that stone porch was already much attenuated by the dappled shade, and the temperature inside the barn close to the French doors was palpably less than in previous years. Success! Grapes were abundant and so were wasps - c'est la vie dans la France profonde, hein?

Peace, perfect peace

J-M's bounty

The rogue glycine

Vine growth on the pergola

Perimeter plantings and sick noyer

Tarte aux framboises, anyone?

Romantic moments...

...and more

Glycine seed pods

Misty morning

Clearing makes things look a little bleak

Willing workers

Porch view

Arty shot by G

Pergola canopy progress shot

Another arty G shot...

...and another

The ultimate arty image of me training vines

Porch vine progress shot

This damaged pommier came down in the storm

G again

Rosemary before the savage pruning exercise

PS Happily, the last three years had seen great growth in G's prunier, C's cerisier, and the self-seeded  noyer sapling; sadly, however, the large noyer mothership was clearly failing. We've known for some years that it was becoming weary, hardly bothering to put out leaves until Summer was well under way. This year, the noyer was almost leafless in August, sending only gnarled branches skyward into the blue. It was with great sadness, therefore, that we decided to have the noyer cut down in mid-October, after our return to Aus. While on the property, the tree surgeon pruned the pommiers too, and he seems to think they are perhaps on their last legs too. Let's hope he's only a tree surgeon, and not a Tarot card reader too.

Clearly we will be planting trees next time we are over...

Dear little dépendance

15 September 2016

It warrants its own entry because it's remarkably cute and gives us disproportionate pleasure. So indulge me, dear reader. Or skip this overlong post.

It used to be a chicken house and then a goat shed.

View of the barn and dépendance from the road

View of dépendance and resident walnut tree from the roadside

And it was a ruin overwhelmed with lierre when we bought the barn, the removal of which accelerated its downfall. (A deadly combo of new-owner enthusiasm and rookie error.) But had we not investigated, we would never have known the delights that lay under all that vegetation...

Anyone seen where I left the goat shed? View from the driveway.

Ooh, a door! And the mature walnut tree growing at an awkward angle from the base of the building

Once exposed, we could see that the stone structure had an almost decorative, oak 'exo-skeleton' and a roof made of hand-cut local ardoise, graded in size from large at the eaves to tiny at the apex of the roof. Many were now lying about the base of the tiny building, having loosened and scattered in countless storms.

Removing the lierre on the barn-side gable end, we discovered two windows...

...and disturbed two bird's nests, one (almost invisible here) above the horizontal oak beam, and one just to the right of the lower window

View from the garden, showing the sorry state of the roof

The door was nothing more than a distant memory in ancient wood and fresh air, but still hinged loyally to the frame.

The door. First impressions are everything in real estate, am I right?

The windows were 3 small holes in the walls; two on the lower level, one higher up, on the gable end facing the barn. There was also a fourth, random hole in the wall at floor level. A makeshift miniature (chicken) ladder rose from the uneven dirt floor to the largest of the window, which featured a square of chicken mesh stretched over a frame.

Mood interior shot showing Portuguese bricks, ladder leading up to frame with mesh, various iron objets d' mystère and an old carriage seat (green) 

Dévitalisant in foreground a hint that the errant walnut's days were numbered

The doorway

Stooping to enter through the collapsed doorway, you had to stay low to avoid hitting your head on the wooden floor of the 'attic' above. In the gloomy interior, there were enough Portuguese bricks to be a nuisance, and a lot of spider webs at face-frenzy height. The lower part of the dépendance housed all manner of iron bits and pieces, broken implements mostly, as well as iron shutter straps and hinges, the metal hoops for wooden cartwheels in a range of sizes, and a bunch of things we could not name.

These were used on cart wheels

All manner of iron bits and pieces, some recognisable; some not.

Your guess is as good as ours

Access to the attic area was through a small window in the gable end. Nestled in the ancient, dusty straw we found a couple of mismatched handmade leather boots.

Nice, innit?

Told you it was exciting in the attic

Once upon a time, there were two maidens named Cinderella and Cinderella1, who were invited to the ball...

 It was a perfectly average storage place for our tent, chairs and table and garden implements for several years. Perfect if you considered its location location location and charm; average if you considered its weather proofing specs (similar to that of a top-end colander).

Getting ready to do some serious planting

 But every time we saw it, it had crept closer to sudden collapse into a pile of rubble.  One year we connected several heavy-duty webbing straps to make a single long one, and cinched it tight around the outside walls. Fixing it to the building, and pulling it tight as possible, we had to dodge tiles that would loosen and fall from overhead...

Turns out, the lierre was holding everything together (I'm tempted at this point to launch into an analogy, and an erstwhile uni friend's idea of a joke, involving spirochaetes and neurones, but will refrain in the interests of decorum).

Fetching orange ceinture sets off the new green post box to great effect, n'est pas?

Cute but damaged - always a dangerous combination, huh?

Arty shot showing much the same

The following year, during the brief holiday over Pâques that we spent there, G cut down the walnut tree.

OK, now for a spot of that dévitalisant...

Then we managed, somehow, and with J-M's long-suffering help, to get a large tarp over the top, which we then fixed in place with another strap, less fetching this time, being black and boring.

Comme un grand cadeau de Noël. 

Along the way, I had a go at creating some stone steps so that access would no longer involve scrambling goat-like (or chicken-style) up a mound of earth...

That red conduit pipe is there for future electrical power cables. We like to plan ahead, we MacGregors, when we're done with inter-clan warfare and the evenings are long

Rough, but it'll do...;)

But it was always going to need remedial work. And we finally bit the bullet last year, as those of you who read this blog might recall. Well, if one of you remembers, perhaps you could remind the other?

The roof comes off, and things start to get a little hairy

Ulp

Spot the crack that threatens to split off the gable end

Door frame, such as it was, comes away

Is it worth saving?

Oak exo-skeleton gone, and looking fragile

The crack that could bring it all crashing down

Phew

The shuttering in place for the new, remedial concrete U beam

Noo roof beams and King truss

And again

Tom's tiling and Gregg's pointing never cease to delight

Inside, all pointed and plastered, and electrics under way 

Looking into the dépendance and out through the doorway - this was the chicken-mesh window, remember?

Original window, glazed

 Last summer, our friend M experienced the monastic delights of a newly renovated dépendance that enjoyed beautiful height, light and a concrete floor, but lacked a door and glazing in the large A-frame window.

















After he left, work began on the mezzanine...

A very awkward space to work in

Tom had been keeping this chestnut board for something special

...and a seasoned chestnut board was placed on the concrete sill below the A-frame.

This year, we arrived to find a freshly painted interior (thanks to Laurie); a new front door - commissioned specially because of the unique size - that shuts firmly and sweetly; a glazed A-frame on the barn side; and an oak floor. Since Tom worked his magic and managed to raise the height of the new roof by a foot or so, happily the mezzanine is now higher by a head than its attic floor predecessor, so even the tallest visitor need not stoop. And there's power, people!

Door and floor and skirting...très civilisée

The dépendance still had Handy Storage Area Potential written all over it (and indeed housed paint tins and other decorating detritus), but we had Other Plans.

We'd designed the mezzanine to be a bed platform, but to maximise head room up there, we chose an extra-thick, bamboo and memory foam mattress protector instead of a mattress. There's a sweet little milking stool for a bedside lamp, and the view out of the A-frame makes the ladder access worthwhile. (We want to organise a wooden stepladder down the track.)

Downstairs, a bit of cleaning was all that stood between us and the fun task of furnishing the space. We bought a couple of deceptively comfortable traditional chairs from Troc and a lamp from Leroy M.,  and brought over a rug and a blanket box from the barn.

Mignonne, n'est pas? This is the AFTER view...

Et voila! C'est fini...

...and this is the BEFORE view

Carriage seat

PS I cleaned up and varnished the chicken-mesh window frame, and added a row of double hooks with ceramic knobs on the lower edge. It makes a great porte-manteau for the barn...and the miniature ladder, somewhere outlandish to hang the car and house keys. Unfortunately, the photo of of the porte-manteau will have to wait until next time and this one of the ladder doesn't do it justice.

But you know you want one. (Orders not taken.)