Sunday 16th June
I throw the windows wide, letting the cool fresh morning air chase out the night time fug. I’m changing beds, clean white sheets for every room, neatly tucked and smoothed, the pillow plumped and the cushions neatly arranged.
We’re hurrying this morning, trying to get through the chores as quickly as we can so that we can go out for lunch - it’s Father’s Day today and Rufus’ birthday on Tuesday. After a morning of hustling we can relax over burgers with our boys, stealing each other’s fries and catching up after another busy week.
Home again and Laurie and I walk through the meadows, stretching our legs and easing full bellies. The grasses are damp with an afternoon of rain, bending under the weight of the raindrops that cling to their seed heads, but there are patches of blue in the sky, the sun just peeping through to help dry everything off - sunshine and storms, the theme of this summer so far.
Monday 17th June
Tim arrives home with kilos of beautiful apricots, their pale orange skins blushed with a deep rosy pink. I sweep up the debris of this mornings flower harvest and find the chopping board. I slice each apricot in half with a sharp knife, easing out the stone and cutting each half into four.
My biggest bowls are lined up on the kitchen island, the piles of fruit inside them slowly growing as I slice. For each kilo of fruit I add 800g of sugar and the juice of a lemon, carefully mixing the sugar and the fruit with a wooden spoon so each slice is coated in sugar crystals.
I crumple parchment paper between my hands, unfold it and then tuck it around the fruit, a clean tea towel on top of each bowl. They’ll macerate over night, the sugar drawing the juice from the fruit to make a syrup that I’ll cook into jam tomorrow.
Tuesday 18th June
The rain thunders down in the early hours, heavy enough to wake me up, the garden sodden and soaked in the downpour. It’s a grey and moody day, storms blowing in and out, the pressure building and breaking, pockets of sunshine making the damp air feel sticky.
I’m in the kitchen all day, two huge pots of apricot jam made, one after the other, chocolate mousse for tonight’s guests, a batch of waffles for the birthday boy and a tarte aux noix caramel too.
I roll out sweet pastry for this last, shop brought today to save time. Easing it into the my tart ring, pricking the base with a fork. I blind bake it until it’s golden (a little too golden on one edge - why can I not remember the hot spot in my oven?).
In a saucepan over a medium heat I melt together sugar and a little water. The crystals slowly dissolving to make a syrup, I watch it darken, slowly caramelising, turning copper. I pour in cold cream and it churns lava-like in angry bubbles, the sugar momentarily solidifying with the cold, I keep stirring, the sugar melting again, thickening as I stir in butter and scatter over crystals of salt. The caramel coats the walnuts and pecans and everything is tipped into the tart shell to cool.
A birthday tart for a boy who is somehow fourteen, half a head taller than me and growing up faster than I’d like. Everyone told me this would happen but I didn’t believe it. I’m torn between wanting to stop time and feeling excited to see what he’ll become.
Wednesday 19th June
An almighty storm raged in the night, thunder and lightening and another huge deluge of rain. The morning is dark and grey, the candles at breakfast adding a welcome glow, another indoor day in the offing.
I clean the kitchen, wiping shelves, organising piles of paperwork, patiently cleaning each crystal of the kitchen chandelier, balancing on the kitchen steps my arms aching from reaching upwards. I watch rose petals fly past the windows as I work, torn from their flowers by the wind and rain. Those that don’t fall ball up and go brown, the garden in tatters after the last few days of weather.
This afternoon though, after two weeks of persistent text messages, Monsieur Asselin arrives to talk to me about gardens. A young, smiley chap, who lives just down the road, a gardener. He agrees to come and help me keep on top of the weeds, borders and hedges two mornings a month.
He starts in July and I’m so grateful. I feel the tightness around my chest release a little, my shoulders dropping a notch. A release of pressure I didn’t know I was holding. Someone else to help in the garden, someone else to help maintain the balance between the wild wilderness and the cultivated one, because right now the wild is winning and I don’t have enough hands and hours to fight back.
Tim and I walk down the drive hand-in-hand, stealing five minutes together before bed. The rain has finally stopped and the evening is golden. The lime trees are full of bees and other insects, there’s a constant rumble above us, an undercurrent of noise behind the crickets and the birdsong, everyone together singing out the day.
Thursday 20th June
Midsummer - though it’s grey and overcast and it hardly feels as if summer has truly begun. I start the longest day with a slow morning walk, soaking up the peace, no need to rush this morning, there are no guests needing breakfast. I force myself to slow down, meandering rather than walking through the woods, Brian at my heels, twining around my legs. In the trees the Golden Orioles are whistling, their woo woo woowoo, woo woo woowoo call ringing out loudly and clearly over the twittering notes of the other birds.
Monty tries to chase a tawny owl, it takes flight from one of the trees in the avenues, gliding silently over the back meadow and up over the tree tops to the woods, while Monty lumbers along underneath, thundering through the tall grass, barking a pointless warning. I imagine the owl rolling its eyes and shaking its head at the ridiculousness of it all.
I cut more sweet peas and nigella for the house, tying up a salvia that has flopped and splayed as I go, its stems all over the place. Three garden canes and some string to truss it up and get it growing upwards again.
Once the flowers and rooms are done I have an hour and a half left in the afternoon before our next guests arrive. I grab my snips, scissors and string and start dead heading the roses in the front borders. Tying up wayward stems and new growth as I go.
I have begun slowly under planting all my roses with salvias after reading that they release a natural fungicide to help prevent black spot. I have a lot of roses so I’ll need a lot of salvias (which happily I love) but it will take a few years to get this natural defence in place. Until then I’ll keep stripping infected leaves as I dead head and prune, the wheelbarrow full of faded petals and heavy, balled flower heads.
My snatched hour and a half is gone, the guests are arriving, there are napkins to iron and dinner to cook. I fall into bed at 10.30pm, my feet and knees aching from another long day without pause.
Friday 21st June
The jasmine that creeps up the front of the house between the roses is in flower. I catch its scent in the early morning, weaving its way through the slats of our bedroom shutters on a cool northerly breeze.
I’m up early, walking Monty through the woods after seeing Rufus to the train, one more week at school before he finishes for the summer, Laurie the week after. A two month break from the school runs and homework will be welcomed by all of us.
The woods feel dark and deep now, the canopy full, the understory thick, the green gloom surrounding you completely as you step inside. It still feels fresh though, this cool summer keeping the leaves bright. The birds are calmer now, steadfastly working to feed their families, their chatter more instructions and gossip, rather than flirting and performance.
Tim and I are much the same, firing instructions at one another as we pass in the hall or wait at the top of the stairs for the other to climb them so we can go down. “Two big towels, one small and a hand towel for Honey. A dressing gown for Meadow. Everywhere needs loo rolls. How are we for brownies? Do I need to bake another batch?”
There’s little time for gossip though, because we have no help this week. Once the rooms in the house are clean we start on the gîte. Making beds, sweeping floors, cleaning bathrooms, restocking cupboards.
The light is beautiful in here today, warm and bright, the sun filling the sitting room, bouncing off the lime white walls and floors. It’s so peaceful too, when the hoover isn’t whirring. With every window open to air the rooms the lime blossom scent blows in, I could curl up on the sofa with a book and lie there all day.
But there’s no time. It’s 2.30pm before we even get time for lunch. The guests will soon be arriving and there are clean towels to fold, grazing boards to make and kilos of cherries to pit.
Saturday 22nd June
Today is a good day, breakfast is cleared, the guests out for the day and the rooms all cleaned by midday, it might be a record.
I go straight into the garden. Tim has put the scaffolding up over the cellar steps again so I can do the final prune of the year on the Constance Spry. She’s thrown up a lot of new growth that’s shielding the view from the meadow suite windows. I bend and curve the whippy stems downwards and tie them in to tidy it up and let the light back into the room.
Rufus is mowing lawns and Tim and Laurie are in the cutting garden building more of the little rustic fences for my flower beds. From my perch on the scaffolding I see them drive into the woods to cut more poles to build the uprights and cross pieces of each fence.
Laurie comes to see me a while later hands on hips. “Next year you really need to just use screws, tying fences with string might look pretty but screws would be faster and just better.” I laugh and tell him he sounds just like Tim. If you’ve built them right, I say, I won’t need to make new ones next year, yours will still be standing. He looks doubtfully at me and shakes his head as he walks away, his father in miniature, or not so miniature at almost 12.
They’ve done a beautiful job, and I’m so grateful. The camera crew are back next week to film in the cutting garden. My fingers are firmly crossed that a few days of sunshine and warmth will make more of the flowers pop, everything is so far behind and it all just looks green, not quite the garden of abundance we’d all envisioned. But at least the fences are finished on the borders that need them. The flowers neatly corralled with stems and string. I have one dahlia starting to open, a few snap dragons and cosmos too, and the next few days are forecast to be fine - it might be alright.
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Hi Rebecca, that a nice surprise to see you in Escape to the chateau DIY. I very much love this show. It was in season 7. I have been binging on this show lately , I still can’t do much with my arm .
But hopefully soon. Enjoy seeing you and your husband in action.🇨🇦
That caramel nut tart looks delicious 😌 Received my email as usual this week after tweaking some settings so it’s all good again 🙂