Sunday 9th June
The blackcurrants in the soft fruit bed are almost ripe, green turning pinkish, then darkening to a deep purple-black. I realise I still have a kilo and a half in the freezer from last year’s harvest, so I pour them into bowls and scatter over some jam sugar. As the currants defrost the sugar turns a beautiful cerise pink, slowly liquifying as it draws the juice from the fruit.
While our guests eat breakfast I crush the currants with the back of my wooden spoon, squashing them against the sides of the bowl, popping the taut smooth skins to release more juice. It jams quickly in the preserving pan, I hardly have time to get the jars in the oven to steralise before the tablespoonful I put on a fridge-cold plate wrinkles and the jam is ready.
Rufus and I pick the last of the elderflowers, snipping the freshest heads from the bushes at the edge of the woods and collecting them in my large straw market basket. More sugar and water boiling on the stove. The syrup flavoured with lemons and the clusters of tiny star shaped flowers, their sweet floral scent infusing into the cordial. We set it aside to steep for a day or two. The last batch for this year.
There are no guests staying over tonight and Dale is here. We spend the afternoon in the garden, catching up and enjoying the sunshine. The boys want a BBQ, but no one can be bothered to unearth it from the back of the pig shed. We light a fire in an old feed trough that sits on the back terrace instead and Tim cooks burgers and sausages over the flames. Everything has a hint of woodsmoke, a campfire cookout in the garden.
Monday 10th June
A flash of copper out of the corner of my eye, a squirrel leaping from the hedge to a tree trunk, then spiralling upwards, around and around the trunk until she’s out of sight in the canopy of leaves. A whole highway of branches open to her, safely away from dogs and cats and people.
I walk down the drive soaking up the sight of the cow parsley and nettles that tower on the verges, the thinning clusters of herb Robert. Alain is coming today with the tractor to cut everything back. I love the wild froth, but I know if it gets left much longer it becomes too unruly to pass. A neat haircut is necessary to keep things safe and tidy, but it does break my heart a little.
I gather another huge bunch of cow parsley before it meets its fate. Fortunately there’s more growing in other parts of the garden. I pick sweetpeas and nigella too and the last three ranunculus flowers. I dead head the rest of the faded ranunculus as I go and cut back the yellowing foliage. I’ll lift the corms in a week or so to dry out for next spring.
Time disappears today. I had plans to sort the shop but got distracted by garden jobs. I just have time to settle the flowers around the house and light the candles before our guests arrive.
Tuesday 11th June
I’m determined to sort the shop today, and thankfully Tim is determined to help because while I get distracted by tying up flopping tomato plants, he is already brushing cobwebs and debris from the eaves of the mossy roof.
I’d wanted to get the shop cleaned and restocked yesterday, but yesterday I had to deadhead the tatty ranunculus and untangle bindweed from the cosmos - jobs I had planned to do on Sunday instead in sitting in the garden.
I find time off hard. There’s always a list of jobs to get on with, always something that needs doing now. With just the two of us doing the majority of the work, if we take time off there’s no one else to pick up the slack, no colleagues to keep things going while we have a break. The list just gets longer if we sit down.
If I’d done the garden jobs I’d planned to on Sunday instead of sitting in the sunshine, the shop would have been done yesterday and I’d be getting on with the planting out that now I’ll have to do tomorrow. Tomorrow I had planned to write, organise newsletters and extra posts. The guilt and pressure builds into a lump in my chest, the overwhelm hitting hard today.
Gently Tim reminds me that we have to have time off sometimes. That we can’t work every hour of every day. That the guests will understand if the roses need deadheading again, and that I just need to make my peace with the thistles that grow faster than I can weed.
We sweep out the shop together, clearing cobwebs, cleaning windows, wiping away dust and grime. Tim heads off to cut and strim the cutting garden grass, while I fill my garden trolley with market baskets, copper pans, vintage grain sacks and French linens. Trundling back-and-forth to the house for more stock, slowly filling our little shop for guests to enjoy now that summer seems to finally be here and the weather is a little drier.
Wednesday 12th June
Our guests all check-out after breakfast, we have another afternoon and evening off - I’m determined to make the most of it. I give the kitchen a thorough clean, scrubbing the floor so hard with the mop that it snaps in half.
I spend the afternoon weeding in the cutting garden. Pulling out thistles and bind weed, the tiny verbena seedlings that are growing everywhere. There are buds on the snapdragons and cosmos, perhaps by next week there’ll be a new flush of flowers.
When the boys are back from school we roll out the second bale of straw around the gîte fence. The last run of fence is on the opposite side of the gîte lawn from the open bale. We discuss our options - if we roll it, the bale will unravel and the straw will go everywhere, we decide to heft it onto the trailer instead.
Rufus tips the trailer up and holds it in place, his arms straining, as the rest of us roll the bale up the now sloping base of the trailer. Happily it fits and we only have to rake up a few armfuls of loose straw. Tim tows the trailer with the truck to the other side of the garden and reverses between the fig trees, the boys and I standing on tree stumps in the grass to mark them out as hazards. We have just enough straw to finish the mulch for the hedge. The straw smothering the weeds and grass, slowly breaking down over the next six months to leave us bare ground to plant the hedge into - even if the hedging grant never materialises.
As the afternoon disappears I plant out the last of the snapdragons, scabious and cosmos in the borders around the house. Hoping they’ll grow on and fill the gaps. I turn away from the roses and their fading heads, promising myself an early night before another busy weekend full of guests. Tomorrow I might have time to get my snips out, or write the piece that is circling around in my head.
Thursday 13th June
I write in the darkness, the half light of the morning filtering through the shutters. Answers to interview questions for a piece for Celeste’s Tsang’s Substack. Notes for another piece I’m writing for you all too. But the light is strengthening, the sun is rising and I know I’m running out of minutes.
There’s no guests to make breakfast for this morning, but the boys still need to get to school. The early morning air is cool and fresh, perfect for the English girl inside me who does love a jumper. It’s full of lime blossom, that scent of June that’s so hard to describe, sweet and floral, slightly citrus, it smells nothing like a lime, but entirely like itself, unmistakable and fleeting and just so beautiful.
Where Alain and the flail have been the grass, nettles and wildflowers are drying in the sun, green turning to gold. The sweet musty scent of hay rising upwards. But I can’t linger any longer, it’s time to get home, there are flowers to cut, rooms to finish, cats to discover napping where they shouldn’t be, and dinner for 10 to prepare.
Friday 14th June
A squally day, heavy showers blowing in between punches of warm sunshine, the wind whipping up, sending rose petals whirling past the windows. I wonder if the stock in the shop will be alright?
A wake of buzzards is wheeling on the air currants between the tall lime avenues at the back of the house. Their broad wings stretched outwards, unmoving as they twist and turn on the rising air, weaving in and out of one another like dancers on an aerial stage. I stand in the window, my arms full of neatly folded towels and watch them. Their dance impossible to catch on camera, a performance just for me, for the album in my mind.
Nicki is away, and today has been so busy with room cleaning and gîte changes overs that I haven’t had a moment for Monty. He stares at me with his biggest, saddest eyes and I grab my coat (a coat in June - this day a year ago Tim tells me it was 37c!).
The woods are wild with wind, that surging energy, the deep rustle of every leaf moving drowning out any other sound. The wild privet is in flower, cones of tiny white flowers, sweetly scented. Apparently it lasts well in a vase. Next week I’ll have to cut some to try out.
The house rises up out of the back meadow between the lime trees. The grasses bending and rippling like waves in the wind, oxeye daisies nodding their now tatty heads. I breathe it all in, soaking up this moment of peace before the juggle of school runs, new guests arriving, cooking for us and then cooking for our guests.
Saturday 15th June
For the first two years we lived here we picked cherries for days, our trees were laden, Alain’s trees were laden. There were so many that Alain sent me up to the very tree tops in a tractor bucket to pick more. We made jam, compotes, clafoutis, cherry vinegar and froze kilos of them for the winter. For the last five summers the birds have eaten every single one.
Each year I wait, watching the little green fruits, waiting for them to turn red, but the moment they do they’re gone. The only cherry tree with fruit on it is the wild sour cherry, with its tiny bright red fruits that are so tart that you can’t help but pucker your lips and suck in your cheeks when the rosy colour tempts you to try one to see if they really are as sour as you remember.
I have a bag of cherries from the supermarket instead, Rainer cherries with their yellow and red blushed skins, sweet and juicy. I slice each one in half and pop out the stone, the juice staining my fingers. It’s a fiddly job, a test of patience, but I don’t mind it. I lay each cherry half on a tray lined with parchment paper and balance the tray in the freezer, hoping no one knocks it until I can transfer the frozen fruit into bags. A summer harvest, of sorts, a store of fruit for clafoutis, one of my favourite summer puddings.
Not that it feels particularly summery, the rain is falling again and the skies are grey. Today though I’m grateful for it. It gives me the excuse to stay inside, to get some writing done, leaving the weeds to double in size and volume no doubt, but they’ll still be there waiting for me when the sun is out again.
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Nestling a too hot coffee carefully in my lap to enjoy the warmth as I type this comment. Today's journal echoes ( what I think is) my life too. There is a pile of lists on my desk, each one relating to a specific plan for the essential the recommended and the dream tasks which lay ahead. The when is yet to be determined for many. You clearly accomplish a great deal in your daily activities. My wish for you is that you take a brief moment to relish in your accomplishments and push that interfering "And now I must" back into the recess of your mind for a moment longer. The to-do 's will never end( sort of like laundry) but the beauty of the life your family is creating needs to be enjoyed now before your boys are grown and gone and you still will have roses to deadhead anyway.
I’ve been painting and decorating for what feels like forever! But this morning I finished what will be a hallway and wine storage “room”. I’m covered in paint, Farrow and Ball Stiffkey Blue but sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of tea and so enjoyed the calmness of your newsletter. Merci x