It’s a beautiful day here in Mazeroux although a storm has been threatening for days now so it may not last much longer. We’ve taken advantage of the recently-improved weather to do some garden chores this last week. The lawn’s all mowed and the hedges have received their annual trimming too, to which my sore back is testament.
Our irises and peonies are starting to bloom, which is encouraging as it is otherwise proving a very odd year for our flora. Our wisteria never flowered in the end. The many buds we saw growing all turned out to be leaf shoots so it apparently decided to skip its flowering phase entirely, which Lucien is as baffled about as we are. Similarly, our raspberries are sparse and spindly whereas by now they are normally covered in pro-fruit. Most distressing of all are our special plants which have barely grown at all so far and still look like freshly-planted seedlings. There is – at last – new growth, but at this rate they’ll barely be ready for planting by summer 2019.
May in France is a month perforated by numerous jours fériés, or public holidays, and today (Pentecost) is no exception, so we’re aiming to take it off. Having as many non-french clients as we do makes this problematic as they often don’t mark french holidays, but we’ll see how we get on.
Workwise, things are fairly calm, which is convenient. The welsh escort site and my gite site now are both at the interminable waiting-for-content stage so in the interim, we’re just fielding any emails that come in and are otherwise enjoying the calm. Mum and Dad get here today for another spell of working on their house. They’re both coming out this time as today is (as you may have gleaned already) their anniversary, so they’re out together to celebrate. This will also give Mum a chance to see for herself all the progress Dad’s been making. We’re planning a meal at the Hotel de France to celebrate.
We had a trip to Périgueux on Friday afternoon: I had an appointment with the Stomatologue (the specialist dentist I saw last year about my wisdom teeth). I explained how despite the course of physiotherapy, I was still having occasional issues. He has ultimately recommended surgery : the teeth themselves are so oddly-positioned as to be useless in any case. His one caveat is that there’s no guarantee it is my wisdom teeth behind all my woes so I could find in a few months that nothing’s changed. I have a horror of going under a general anaesthetic so am currently mulling it over. Afterwards, we called in to our favourite pizzeria in town and had a meal out on their terrace before coming back home for a chilled out evening.
On Saturday, I finished the hedge trimming that I’d started on Thursday and then spent the rest of the afternoon playing guitar and enjoying the sun. That evening, we were invited to Marie and Christian’s for a meal: a Vietnamese evening. She rang that afternoon soundly slightly stressed and asked if we thought Manu & Mathilde might also be free to join us too, as she’d inadvertently made rather a lot too much food for just four. As it turned out, they were, so they came over to ours and we car-pooled on to St Pardoux.
We had aperitifs out on the terrace then moved inside for a spectacular meal. The starters were sort of bite-size spring-rolls with a stuffing of minced pork and veggies, wrapped in a batter then fried. They were out-of-this world good. Afterwards the main was a vegetarian noodle dish. As is traditional, we then moved on to digestifs of whisky and/or eau de vie before heading back home.
I made a start on giving the house a clean the following morning, then in the afternoon we had a band practise. This was the last one for a while – M&C are away next week, then Matt will be in recovery from his surgery (the operation is next monday). Fortunately, we’re sounding quite polished on most of our songs by this point. Right, that’s about it for the round-up. I’m going to finish house cleaning in readiness for our guests. A la prochaine…