Sunday 7th April
The first bluebells are out in the woods, straight spires with pale mauve-blue bells delicately unfurling. Everything is flowering early this year after such a mild wet winter, the woods suddenly green and thickening with life. The colour hits you hard after the greys and browns of winter, taking your breath away like a punch to the stomach.
There’s no time to linger in the green gloom of it, soaking up the birdsong, I need to get back to the kitchen, our floral retreat starts tomorrow. I bake brownies and granola, recipes I make week-in-week-out in the summer months. It’s been so long since the last batch though and my brain is cobwebby and slow. I have to look up the recipes in my notes, the measurements buried deep under a winter of other thoughts.
“How do we usually?” And “where does this go?”, are common refrains, Tim and I both struggling to remember how we do things. Jobs that we usually do by instinct no longer feel normal. The dithering is exhausting.
I stand in the kitchen filling bud vases with flowers for every room; ranunculus, anemones and snaps (some stems from the wholesalers because I don’t have quite enough in the garden at this time of year), tucked in with hawthorn, hornbeam and young stems of lime from the hedgerows along the drive.
I find some wych elm too, it has clusters of pale lime seed pods, round and fine, almost translucent with a pinky brown seed inside; they look beautiful amongst the pinks and whites of the flowers, tying in with the lime white of the guelder rose. Edible too they say, cucumbery, but I don’t dare try them, just in case.
Liz and Becky arrive late afternoon, driving from the U.K. in a van full of flower mechanics and props for the retreat. We settle in the salon for supper, a catch up and to chat over our plans for the next three days.
Monday 8th April
We juggle school runs and breakfast time, getting ourselves back into long forgotten work routines. I drive Laurie down the twisting lanes to the bus stop because Tim is busy. I turn right into the village, past the church, towards the cluster of children standing opposite the mairie, with their high-vis gilets and huge backpacks. There is an enormous bang and the car lurches to one side, a loud hiss, a collective gasp from the bus stop audience. I’ve misjudged the new curb, which bumps out further than it used to, hit it at such an angle that somehow both the passenger side tyres have burst.
My face is hot with embarrassment as I carefully pull the car to the side of the road, my brain whirring, how has this happened, I don’t have time, how are we going to fix this? Laurie is mortified, tugging his heavy school bag out of the car, telling me grumpily that it’s both wheels and then slamming the car door to face his friends, the shame of a mother who can’t drive hanging over him like a cloud.
I call Tim, hands shaking and ask him to come a collect me. While I wait I can hear that Laurie now has celebrity status at the bus stop, there are multiple re-tellings of my “crash” with sound effects from all of the boys. I slide lower into my seat, too ashamed to get out of the car until the bus has come, the children have gone and Tim is on his way.
We only have one spare wheel and with guests arriving this afternoon we have no time to wait around for recovery. We lock the car and leave it in the village. The drive home is quiet, aside from my frequent apologies, both of us wondering how we’ll juggle school runs and trips to the bakery each morning with just the truck - a complication of logistics that we really don’t need this week. Trouble comes in threes they say, after Saturday’s fallen chandelier I wonder what is coming for me next?
The rest of the day passes in a whirl of flowers and food. I dot bud vases of my homegrown flowers down the long table in the salon, candles flickering in between. A daunting task when many of the guests are florists. But then I remember how grateful I am when anyone cooks me a meal, gives me somewhere lovely to sleep or makes me breakfast. When you do something for a living, you rarely take the time to make the effort for yourself. I hope they’ll love it.
Everyone arrives late afternoon, after long days of trains and ferries, we open the wine, let them settle in and listen to the sound of chatter and laughter as we cook and prepare in the kitchen.
Tuesday 9th April
I have missed the meditative routine of setting the breakfast tables. The quiet time, while everyone else is still asleep, the sun rising and the salon growing lighter each minute. Everything orderly, in its place, mats, then plates, cutlery, then glasses. The systems slowly clicking into place, each of us remembering how we do our part of each job. The corners of our minds dusted off and working again.
Once one meal is done we’re setting up for the next. A table laid for lunch while our guests create bouquets and bowls full of flowers in shades of pink for tonight’s dinner table, working away in the gîte kitchen, which is now all set up as a flower workshop.
The house is full of flowers by mid-afternoon, the stairs draped in colourful flowers and greenery foraged from the grounds. Roses and delphinium in pinks and blues, with bright pops of yellow and dusky orange Icelandic poppies. The salon mantlepiece is dressed in pinks, whites, mauves and blues; purple tulips, pink scabious, roses and ranunculus. It all looks beautiful, stocks and narcissi filling the air with their heady scents.
I am cooking. Backwards and forwards, around and around the kitchen I go, making one meal and prepping for the next and trying to feed us in between.
Wednesday 10th April
The mornings are darker again now, the clock change stealing light from the morning to give it to the evening. Rufus and I walk down the drive in the half-light, the trees just taking shape against the first light in the sky. We talk about the exams Rufus has tomorrow, how much revision he still needs to do, how nervous he’s feeling, these early morning walks are precious time.
There is always a period of adjustment for the boys at the start of the season. There’s a lot of sshhhing, a lot of polite, and then not so polite, reminders that there are guests in the house, to keep their voices down, to turn down the tv, to mind their manners. There’s the inevitable push back when all of a sudden we become less available, our time shared between them and the guests. It’s hard for them sharing their home.
I become fierce about our family meal times, snatched between welcoming and cooking for our guests. And these early morning school runs too. They are our time in the day to be together without distractions, when we can talk to the boys, make sure they are ok, help with homework and just be a family. I guard this time. It’s always a juggle between the business and our family. It’s so easy for the business to swallow everything and fast. It’s why we are so strict about not changing the times we offer breakfast and dinner to our guests all summer, so we can make sure our boys have what they need.
The boys are off to school and it’s another day full of flowers. The sun is shining and it’s warm enough for lunch outside. We set up a long trestle table as our guests create an arch of flowers around the salon doors. The flowers and foliage are cleverly tucked into columns of chicken wire, sustainable mechanics that can be reused again and again to create an arch of flowers anywhere you might want one.
While they work, I roll out rounds of puff pastry and spread each one with red pesto and tomato purée, I scatter over peppers, courgettes, aubergines and onions that I have slowly roasted in the oven. Each tart is dotted with olives marinated in balsamic vinegar and honey, and then topped with slices of goats cheese or grated comté and a sprinkling of oregano. I bake them until golden and bubbly and serve them with a simple green salad with vinegrette for lunch. Our guests eating in the sunshine, drinking rosé and loving being outside.
While Tim hangs a chandelier in a tree for Liz (a job I’d never convince him to do for me!) I begin the dinner prep. My feet and knees are aching, my chambres d’hôtes muscles need building up again, the tolerance for this much time on my feet needs to increase fast.
We are still on our feet as the sun starts to slide back behind the trees, I stand at the kitchen window for a moment catching my breath and I notice then that the hirondelles are back, swirling above the trees, dipping, diving, dancing in the evening air.
Thursday 11th April
A final breakfast, flowers cleared from the mantlepiece, leaves and petals swept up, cars packed, and everyone is going home. We wave them off, thank them all for coming to stay and then we get ready to start again.
Nicki arrives to help us clean up and flip rooms, bringing with her the spare wheel from her car, which happens to fit ours. Finally the car can be rescued from the village, where no doubt the story of its demise has spread virus-like from house-to-house. Home and safe the car can wait for new tyres to be ordered and fitted, and we will keep juggling school runs and bakery trips, getting up that little bit earlier to fit it all in.
While Nicki cleans rooms, I sort leftover flowers, rescuing roses, hellebores, spirea and lisianthus from the compost pile and revelling at the thought of the beautiful things I can make to welcome our new guests. But first there are beds to make, laundry to sort and the house to make ready again, our heritage upholstery retreat starts tomorrow.
When Tim gets home with the food shopping the kitchen is under a layer of flowers and foliage. The floor, the worktops, every surface scattered with debris. It is chaos. I stand in the midst of it all filling every vase I can with the leftovers.
I’m still in scruffy clothes and covered in bits of leaf when Jodie arrives, her car packed to the gills with webbing, springs, tacks, fabric and equipment so she can teach our upholstery course. Tim gives her a tour while I unearth the kitchen from under the flower mess, sweeping away the chaos and making the kitchen cosy again.
I realise the Rayburn has gone out, the day so warm that no one has remembered to throw on a log. It’s plenty warm enough without it as we sit in the kitchen together firming up our plans for the next few days. Perhaps this will be it now, the tick and crackle of logs gone until next autumn?
Friday 12th April
A spring mist is rising from the earth, or perhaps sinking from the sky. Everything is diffused. The light from the rising sun glowing golden behind it all. The air is sweet and fresh, full of blossom and that bright green scent of spring.
My attention is caught by the singing of a bird. Loud and clear, trilling and chirruping, beautiful twists and curls to its voice, rippling whistles, powerful and mellow all at once. It stops me in my tracks. I can’t see its source, but I’m sure it’s a nightingale. I record its song into my Merlin Bird app and it’s true, a nightingale, singing its heart out in the scrubby hedge between the drive and François field.
I can’t help but smile, stretching my arms out as I stand there listening, closing my eyes and turning my face to the sun, breathing in spring. One of those pinch me moments, all of this for the taking, just on my doorstep. I walk home with a smile on my face. Back to bed making and kitchen duties and making ready for our next retreat guests.
While Nicki and I clean the gîte and make beds, Jodie and Tim turn the gîte kitchen from flower studio to upholstery workshop, lining up two trestle tables back-to-back, laying out sets of tools for everyone, curved needles, hammers, webbing stretchers, tack removers, mallets, scissors and tape measures.
There are piles of springs, rolls of webbing, boxes of tacks, bolts of hessian and bags of hair stuffing. Everything our guests will need to strip, stuff and reupholster their chairs. Chairs which now stand on the table at each work station. It looks brilliant, I hope they’ll love it.
Before we know it the guests are here, settling in with drinks in the salon. I am cooking again, a meal to welcome them all for the weekend.
Saturday 13th April
Yesterday a nightingale, today frogs. Not quite as beautiful, their croaky, throaty songs lustily ringing out across the meadows from our lake and the ponds in François field. I hear them slip into the water as I stand by the lake, plopping and splashing into the dark water from the bank as they sense my presence, enjoying the high water levels this wet winter has brought.
I lay up breakfast for our guests and then make pancakes for the boys, a weekend request. They eat them filled with raspberry jam or Nutella, sitting at the kitchen table talking about computer games that I do not understand.
As we clear the breakfast things we can hear the pounding of hammers; tack removal has begun in the upholstery workshop. Each guest working on their own chair under Jodie’s careful tuition. The hammers ring out all morning, I can hear it as I pick mint for some smashed pea dip for the lunchtime grazing boards.
There’s something about the light today, or maybe it’s the scent of the mint, but it reminds me of my grandma. The fresh brightness of the sun, the spring slant of it, the particular warmth of the sun on my back, it takes me to her spring garden, where I’d be sent to collect the mint for the peas or some parsley for the broad beans. I smile and think how strange it is that things like this make people pop into your mind.
By the end of the day our guests have stripped their chairs and begun rebuilding them, webbing and springs for some where needed and new hessian and hair stuffing for everyone. Such great progress in so short a time. They sit in the garden in the last of the sunshine enjoying a glass of wine, flexing tired muscles and relaxing until it’s time to eat again.
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Thoroughly enjoyable, as usual. Thank you. And I felt for you with the tyres, the potholes on our Devon lanes have to be tackled at walking speed!
Good morning Rebecca , your home looks just wonderful busting back to life for the summer and welcoming your guests for the summer ahead. .
No one does it like you, and I watch all the Cheateau Series
Your understated elegance your way of arranging your living spaces and flowers adds a touch of tranquility and calmness.
I try I do try to do it Rebecca’s way but no , the end result is not the same , although I have learnt some touches from you and my family love my efforts anyway.
Sunday morning coffee , reading your Journal is my start to Sundays in Uk .
I look. forward to the coming season at your cheateau and wonder at your enthusiasm and stamina.