Overdue, yes I know. It’ll probably be too long as well, even though not much has happened lately. The main thing to note is that Summer has finally gotten its act together. We’ve had the odd cool day, but for the most part it has been sunny and hot for a good while now. Yesterday, today and tomorrow all 32 degrees. In fact, barring Sunday, it’s 28 or above all the way on the long-term forecast, which makes for a very happy me, if also for a somewhat parched veggie plot.
So, since Spardos, it’s been business as usual at Port 80. The veggie plot is now in full production mode, meaning we are subsisting on a diet of courgettes, cucumbers, beans and tomatoes. Now, you can do a lot with this combination, but after a few weeks, it does get a little tedious. Definitely only planting one courgette plant next year. We’ve also got melons, butternut squash and pumpkins coming along well. Oh, and apparently no-one told our fig tree that 2012 is a write-off year for fruit trees: it is obscenely laden. It normally does 2 harvests, one in early summer and the other in late summer. There was nothing for first harvest, but it has now made up for this and then some. In a couple weeks, it will be literally raining fig in the front garden. Recipes gratefully received…
On the work front, things are more or less the same for Matt. He has 2 sites he is concentrating on at present, one of which he is mostly enjoying, but the other is a bit of a nightmare of poorly-written code that he has the unenviable task of updating. His office has no air-con and he is up on the second floor of the building, so his 2 days in the office havent been too pleasant lately. This has been exacerbated by the fact that for the last 2 weeks, the hottest day has fallen on an office day. The worst was last Thurs when it hit 34 in Mazeroux. I do love me my heatwaves, but even I couldn’t handle many minutes of that heat.
For me, work is slowing down. I recently finished a site I’ve been working on for a few months, for a manor house & gite rental business. The client is well chuffed with it and I ended up getting a decent chunk of cash too, so everyone’s a winner. Apart from that, I have one for a decorator in the UK and the one for the local equestrian centre, but in both cases, I am waiting on the client. I’ve run 2 ads lately with 0 success, but I’m putting this down to the time of year.
Ok, that’s the boring stuff out of the way – onto the socialising. Last Friday, we were joined by Lee for dinner. Richard is back in the UK doing some work on one of their rental properties and selling their car to get a van instead. He should be back early next week, so we will try and arrange an evening with the pair of them one weekend soon. Lee joined us around 8ish, bringing with him a bottle of Smirnoff. This, along with our 1.5 litre bottle of vodka, was demolished over the evening, which was impressive work on our part. We served a meal of marinated, bbq’d chicken breasts that came out very nicely, along with broccoli and a pasta salad. We then moved on to a game of poker that, if memory serves (and it’s all a bit sketchy from here on) Lee won. I also seem to remember that the Rocky Horror Picture show DVD was put on at some silly hour. Needless to say, we were a bit dysfunctional the next day. Still pissed, in all likelihood. Matt put together a breakfast/lunch that helped somewhat. After that, Lee got back to see to his cats, leaving us to recouperate.
We got 11 hours of well-needed sleep on Saturday night, so were ready for our Sunday event; lunch with our friends Pete & Sally. We’d talked about doing a BBQ, but as it turned out, Sunday was one of the blip days where it went cool and rainy, so we changed our minds and opted for a sausage pasta bake. This was followed by some patisserie from our bakery. P&S have just gotten back from the UK where they picked up a cute Jack Russell puppy to replace their poor dog that recently got run over and killed. They stayed with us for a few hours before heading back to see what mischief the wee beast had gotten up to in their absence.
Our other social event was on Tuesday this week, when we were invited over to Bryan and Carol’s for aperitifs. As we’ve mentioned, Carol was in the UK for 8 weeks helping her daughter move house. Bryan went back for the last week to collect her and they’re both now extremely relieved to be home again. It was a lovely warm evening, so we sat out in their garden. Several drinks later, they invited us to stay for dinner too. Carol, like us, has a lot of courgettes growing and, during her absence, a few had been left to their own nefarious devices and had become gigantic marrows. She had a recipe for stuffed marrows that she put together, and they were divine. We had a bit of a smorgasbord of leftovers in our fridge, so we contributed those to the meal. We left some time after nightfall, well-oiled and well-fed. Nice to have them both back again!
Finally, the socialising continues ce soir, as Ridgit (Richard and Brigit) are back in France on holiday. Their place is only up the road from us and they’ve invited us over for a meal. We’re looking forward to seeing them both again, not to mention sampling his superb cooking again. OK, I’m leaving it there. A la prochaine fois.