Relaxing garden

It was another glorious day today. We have some guests arriving tomorrow evening, so I wanted to have a tidy up in the garden. I’d mowed it earlier in the week, so Brian got the strimmer out to tidy up around the edges whilst I did a bit of weeding and planted out some geraniums. I need to buy a lot more, but these will give a bit of instant colour.

Brian has also started to prune the box trees, although it is quite a task, so the others will happen over the coming weeks.

For now though, as the sun sets, the garden is looking like a wonderful place to relax.

Wheelie heavy

Our sideboard was being delivered today. We’d prepared the ‘library’ as best as we could for its arrival. We have a pair of doors that exit into the courtyard, so the plan was for them to bring it in this way.

However, one man and a van with two wheelie pallets was going to make the delivery quite difficult across the gravel courtyard.

Brian realised the wheelie pallets were just a hindrance, so went and got our trolley, and although this was not ideal, it was a help as the cabinet was extremely heavy for two guys to lift. I have to say though that the delivery chap really threw himself into getting it in place.

it was a huge struggle, and we were very glad when it was finally in situ. After seeing the delivery man off Brian put the drawers back in, and I got to cleaning it.

We are loving our latest purchase but won’t be doing much more now with it, or the room, until next autumn, but we do have lots of ideas.

Feeding time

We woke to beautiful blue skies this morning, and it didn’t take us long to set our table up outside where we could enjoy an idyllic little breakfast.

We have a pair of blackbirds that have returned for another year, so we sat quietly trying to work out where they have nested. Daddy bird is definitely bringing in plenty of food for Mummy bird and possibly chicks, as he is making regular trips flying in and out of the barn. We have yet to see the nest though, but hopefully it’s also suitably difficult for predators to find.

Musée d’art moderne

We had some friends from the UK visiting us last weekend. On Saturday we decided to go to the ‘musée d’art moderne’ in Troyes. It has just reopened after an extensive refurbishment, taking about three years. They are still working on one of the floors, but they have not let that delay the opening any further. Even though it is not finished, they still have a great collection of artwork on display, which is well worth a visit.

I think Brian’s favourite piece is a sculpture of a jesters head by Picasso, a really delightful bronze. I have to say it really is quite beautiful.

However, I do love Degas. I’ve always loved the way in which he depicts people, and the dancers he paints are just exquisite. They have a rather cheeky statue of a girl bathing, which I really admired. I love how he has captured the movement of the girl, how you can really feel her washing her hair.

Over the two floors there was an interesting selection of artists, including Picasso, Degas, Rodin, Seurat and Modigliani to name but a few.

Morning sun

Last week we bought a beautiful Acer. We both love the vibrant green, delicate leaves it has through summer, which turn a deep red in autumn. I am a bit concerned the hot summers here may burn the leaves, but we have chosen a spot that only gets the morning sun, so fingers crossed.

I think it will add a delicate contrast to the roses in the garden.

La Fête du muguet

‘Le Premier Mai’ or ‘la Fête du Muguet’, or even ‘Fête du Travail’ is a reason for a public holiday in France. La Fête du Muguet, which is the ancient name for the festival, is when you see people selling little bunches of Lily of the Valley in the street. I just love seeing them, and they are most often outside the boulangeries, as they are probably the only places open for business. It’s the only paid holiday day in France when employers absolutely cannot ask their employees to work, hence the other name for it ‘Fête du Travail’, or Labour Day. It had been celebrated on and off until 1948, when it was finally written into law, and definitively established as a public holiday.

Das wonky

I bought this little porcelain statue last year at a vide grenier. I think I paid about 5 euros for it. I love using it as a table decoration when we are having dinner, as it has a view from 360°.

The trouble was though it had a missing foot at the base, so sat rather wonky.

Brian assured me he could fix it, but I have to say it was never a priority and I didn’t really mind it’s wonkiness too much. However, he has been working on fixing it for me bit by bit. It was quite genius how he did it, and with such patience.

He used some white clay called Das, which dries in the air. He first made a cast from one of the other two feet. He used this dried mould to make the new foot, which needed some finessing before fitting it to the statue.

No more wonkiness.

Tree down

We’d had a day pottering around in the garden, and we’d been talking about removing some dead fir trees that are looking brown and twiggy. There’s five of them in all. We are not sure why they died, although I do think they just didn’t like the hot summers we have here. We agreed it would be good to wait for some help, to pull them out completely with the roots attached.

I’d nipped in to sort some lunch, and when I came back out Brian had taken three of the trees down and laid them in the courtyard.

“Wow! How did that happen?” I asked. “Thought I’d just give it a go, and they just pulled straight out”.

Straight after lunch the chain saw came out and he made short work of cutting them up. Three down, two to go…

The power of flowers

The days and evenings are warming up, which means a lot more of the flowers in the garden are starting to bloom. The daffodil’s which have been out now for a few weeks, are just starting to fade, but the tulips are looking bright and gorgeous.

I just love the vibrancy of the yellow tulips. My tree peony is also just starting to bloom, it’s a beautiful cheeky pink. I think a few of its flowers will definitely make it into a vase.

For now though it’s an eclectic mix of colour from the tulips, purple irises and some lilac, mixed in with some garden greenery. I just love this time of year for flowers, they do bring me such a lot of joy.

Sourdough

Brian has been trialling making some sourdough bread. I have to say he is getting rather good at it. A friend gave us some of her starter to get us going, and explained the method she uses. He decided to bake it in a cast iron pot as a round loaf and it came out really well.

I was cooking us some white asparagus for tea as it’s currently in season. So we had a simple supper of asparagus sautéed in a little butter, lemon juice, water and seasoning, served with freshly baked bread and salty butter. Delicious.

Clean sweep

We are starting our big deep clean. I’m expecting it will take a good couple of weeks, as we will break the jobs down and do a bit every day. Brian started on the oven and canopy. He regularly cleans the filters, but today he had the whole canopy gleaming from top to bottom.

I have started on the china shelf. It’s a delicate operation, but I love taking the time and care to check over and wash all my pretty little tea cups and items I’ve collected.

Hardcore

Sunday morning we decided to pop out for coffee and a pain aux raisin. It was a bit of a threatening looking sky, but it was warm and there is a small veranda to enjoy the view of the vines from. We we sat and enjoyed our coffee together.

When we got home Brian asked if I could just help him in the well room to move some wood. I couldn’t just move the wood as it was all a bit of a muddle in there, so we got changed and set to work. I started by tidying an area over the actual well where I could store some pots. Brian started putting some hooks up on the walls to hang our gardening tools. It wasn’t long before we felt we’d already achieved. Cleaning and sweeping as we went.

We then needed to address the wood. It was a mixture of old beams and floor boards, all useful at some point in the future. We moved it to the back of the room, out of the way, but easy enough for Brian to get to if he needed to.

We obviously couldn’t stop there! He had a pile of stone, which he was keeping to use as hardcore (yes another project on the list) which was currently in his cave. He needed it to be moved to progress the cave further, so we spent the next 30 minutes moving it into our now nice, ‘clean’ and tidy well room.

A good job done.

Brushing up

Mushrooms are one of my favourite foods, I find them very versatile to cook with, and can often be the centre part of a dish or as a side. They are delicate little things, which grow in the dark, and need a lot of humidity to produce their familiar caps.

We have a farm about 45 minutes from us who grow some delicious mushrooms, and sell them at the local markets in the area. I particularly like their Champignon de Paris brun, which are quite tight in texture, very tasty, and their pleurottes, a bluish mushroom shaped a bit like a trumpet. These are wonderful sautéed in a bit of butter, garlic and parsley.

These fragile fungi often have the remnants of the earth they were grown in embedded in their caps and stalks. Washing them also washes away their flavour, and rubbing them with a tea towel easily damages them. So the other day, whilst we were in Troyes, we visited one of our favourite hardware stores and purchased a ‘Mushroom brush’. Shaped like a little mushroom itself, this brush allows us to get the dirt off of the mushrooms without causing harm. Splendid!

Blossom and wine

The plum tree is full of blossom this year, so I’m really hopeful that we are going to get a bumper crop. We had pruned a few of the trees in the garden some weeks ago, I’m not sure if that made a difference, but all the fruit trees are definitely looking healthier. Today we spent the day mowing, strimming and generally tidying up on the slope.

The grass is looking lush and green, after enjoying the mix of rain and sunshine we’ve had lately. It is spotted with patches of yellow cowslips and daffodils, which always makes for an interesting mow.

It was such a glorious evening we decided to enjoy an early supper up in the garden. A choice of local cheeses, some homemade chutney and a rather nice bottle of Morey Saint Denis.

Embracing Change

Earlier this week I wrote a post for ‘LinkedIn’ a social media business platform. It describes briefly our journey to reach here, which I wanted to write to help inspire other people who may be thinking of doing something similar. It’s had nearly 2000 views, and 50 reactions, and I’ve received some very positive feedback- so I thought I would share it via my blog more as a recap, I hope you enjoy the read.

I know change can be scary, but it can also be exciting, it can motivate and invigorate. I believe there are times in our lives when change is important, when maybe we are flagging and need an injection of difference, but I honestly didn’t realise how important the changes that we had planned to make in our lives were going to be for us.

Our old lives were super busy, mostly taken up with work, and travel to and from it. In the spare time we had left we shoe-horned in the gym, meals out, expensive holidays and the all-too-frequent bouts of retail therapy. Then there were my pampering days and regular hair appointments, it all seemed so important to me at the time.

In 2020 we decided to sell our house in the UK and move to France, leaving our corporate roles, and our old lives, behind. My aim had always been to retire by the age of 55 and do something different, but what I didn’t realise was that ‘doing something different’ was such an important part of our plan, and truly aided our retirement. After all, we were leaving work, and that meant no more money coming in, some things were going to have to change.

So, with the long hours of work a thing of the past, we were free to investigate a different way. Our gym became the house and the garden. There’s so much to do, and doing it keeps us so much fitter than our infrequent gym visits ever did. Our surrounding countryside allows us to do wonderful walks straight from our door, and we also find time now to do a daily stretching routine, with a series of videos we found on YouTube. The regular visits to my hair colourist have gone, and I’ve embraced my natural hair colour, which I love. The shopping trips have moved aside for something far more exciting, we now visit antique markets (brocantes) and flea markets (Marché des puces) where we find things that give us far more pleasure than we could imagine. The search for a little treasure is wonderful, and brings such joy. I’m also finally able to embrace my cooking properly, with all the care that time now allows me.

Now I’m not saying that we have stopped doing all the things we did before, we just do them when we want to, not all the time. But to embrace our new pace of life we needed to approach our lives differently. We didn’t overthink this at the time, but now we can see how change has worked for us. In truth, entirely changing our lives allowed us to reset our expectations, and also our needs. It’s been a truly freeing experience, that’s allowed us to achieve retirement in a way we only ever imagined. Nothing can prepare you for such massive changes, but what we had was a purpose, to find a new pace of life, new experiences, and a positive environment for improving our health and well-being.

Our changes could have been really scary without a strong plan in place. At times we’ve had to flex our approach, dealing with the little challenges that change brings, but it keeps it exciting and our aim invigorates us to carry on.

Library begins

Yesterday we drove into Troyes to do a bit of shopping. We wanted to try and find a sideboard that we could use underneath a bookcase Brian is going to build in our ‘work in progress’ library. I think I had in mind an old French carved sideboard, but in the ‘depot vente’ we found this wonderful old oak unit. It does need a bit of tidying up, one of the drawers is stiff, and the doors need some catches. We also need to rub it down and re-wax it, but otherwise it’s in really good condition.

We couldn’t arrange delivery until a couple of weeks time, but we are in no hurry, although we are both excited to get started on it and see it in situ.

Getting there

Brian has been working in the cave the last few days, sorting out the lighting in the entrance, and attaching a few more panels of OSB (chipboard).

They were a bit tricky to cut and fit in, which is why I think he has been avoiding them, but I do know he’s also keen to get it finished, ready for when the warmer weather gets here.

I can see why it’s been a bit tricky though, the beams are less than straight!

he also managed to put the, very heavy, water pump back on the wall, for a little old fashioned’ styling.

We have the Essoyes wine festival in May, where we like to go and enjoy a dégustation before buying a selection of french wines for our friends and guests to enjoy, so hopefully it will be up and running by then.

Tasty day

These are the treats that we bought yesterday at ‘Dimanche à la campagne’, or Sunday in the country. It’s a festival to celebrate all the beautiful local produce in our region.

It was a much bigger event this year, with 50 farms and producers opening their doors to the public. For me, part of the fun is selecting which ones we will get to visit.

Our first visit was in the little village of Fourcheres. There is a small microbrewery there, with an épicerie next to it. They had invited lots of other small local producers to have stalls in one of their barns. It was such a fun atmosphere to get the day started, with local musicians and a balloon magician for the kids.

For lunch we headed to La ferme des blé d’or, which is owned by my friend Dominique and her husband Olivier, who mills his own wheat and presses his own oils.

They were all set up for making lunch of fresh pizzas in a wood fired oven. There was a huge queue, as the food looked wonderful. Mine was vegetarian, with homemade lentil Hummus and roasted vegetables. Brian had crème fraiche, bacon and onions. They were both delicious. Then we had a little tray of desserts.

It had been quite a cold day, but it was wonderful to see a very well attended event all across the region. Everyone is so enthusiastic and proud of their work, the cold weather really did not seem to matter.

It’s a great way for us to discover and sample local produce that we can offer to our guests, and I’ve got lots of ideas for some tasty, new dishes.

A dry day

We spent the morning together removing staples and stripping the final two chairs down. We then tightened the strapping on the seats.

This afternoon I’ve put the first coat of paint on, which I now need to leave to dry overnight.

As it had turned into quite a clear, dry afternoon, I thought I would get some plants I’d bought planted. We had bought a few ground cover plants for behind one of the benches in the garden. I’m hopeful they will grow well in this spot partly under the shade of the rose bush. The hellebore is loving it.

Two to go

Back in the atelier today to try and get the two chairs finished. It’s raining outside, so a great place to enjoy the day with a talking book. I’m currently listening to ‘The summer that changed us’ by Cathy Bramley. Something light that I don’t have to concentrate on too much.

I finished off the stapling of the fabric, then Brian came to help me glue the braid around the edges.

We both think that they are looking great, I now can’t wait to get the final two finished.