I am pleased to report that the patient is making good progress. The nurse has been coming around every other day to change his dressings and she says he seems to be healing well. He is still a bit sore in places, but it’s only been a week so it’s not that surprising.
It’s been a quiet week, both on the work and social fronts, so this should be a quick one from me. The weather’s been mostly naff here. Storms, or at least the risk thereof, have become a daily feature. It’s been grey, humid and rainy and it seems this will be the format for all of June. We had a couple more nights with Dad, finishing off the last of the mexican food on the Tuesday evening. The next day I went to Nontron to get us supplies and we had a pasta bake for dinner.
On Thursday morning, Matt had an 8.30 appointment with an ophthalmologist in La Tour Blanche, a town about 40 mins away. We’d been waking up early in any case so got there in good time. He wanted another opinion on his prescription/glasses issue, but nice as the lady was, she wasn’t ultimately all that helpful. She tested his eyes and the resulting prescription was virtually the same as his old one, which can’t be right. His quest for new glasses has been a bit of a nightmare, and an expensive one at that, so the less said on the matter the better.
Dad left us on Thursday afternoon, sore and aching from his labours, but justifiably pleased with his progress on the house. All the plaster boarding is done, as is the tiling in the kitchen and bathrooms. The plumber/electrician is also very nearly done too, or so he claims. All told, the house should be habitable by the end of the year. I will post some photos as soon as I have some to share. That evening Matt decided he was up for conversation class, and even managed to drive himself there, although he probably shouldn’t have done.
The weather improved on Friday and, as work was still quiet, I took advantage to trim our wisteria and our grape vines. We had aperitifs outside then moved in for dinner and a TV evening. The good weather held the following day, so we designated it a gardening day and finally dealt with our veggie plot. We drove to the nursery at Quinsac to get our plants for the season, but as we’d left it so late, they were out of tomatoes. We got some cherry toms instead, as well as a courgette, a squash, some herbs and a big bag of potting soil.
We swang by St Pardoux on the way home to add some tomatoes to our purchases and then set about planting it all when we got back. Matt helped as much as he could, and it was probably too much as he was a bit sore the next day. As well as our new purchases, we also decided to plant half of our special plants, which still haven’t really grown, it pains me to say. We’re keeping the other half in their pots for now, just until we see what happens to the others.
In the meantime, fearing the worst, we ordered some additional seeds a while back, so we’ve planted three more, which have just germinated. We’ve also ordered ourselves a plastic walk-in green house from Amazon which we’ll set up at the bottom of the garden. We’re going to use it as an incubator and see if that helps. What we really need is some more settled, seasonal weather but we appear to be out of luck as far as that goes.
That afternoon I gave the back garden a much-needed mow. Both it and the front already need doing again but finding a rain-free slot is going to be problematic, according to the forecast. Lucien and Mauricette came over on Sunday to see how Matt was doing, and to present him with a bottle of wine “to help with the recuperation”. They showed up at cocktail hour so had a drink with them and chatted for a bit. For the last 12 years, Lucien has maintained an almanac of the weather in Mazeroux (as you do), and according to him, in 2018 to date, we’ve already had about the same amount of rain as we had in the whole of 2017. I can’t say I found this news surprising…