Sunday 2nd June
The pizza crust is crisp and bubbly, layered up with spinach, peppers, courgettes and tomatoes, a drizzle of chilli oil. I can’t decide if it tastes so good because it actually is good or just because I didn’t have to cook it? I lean back in my chair contentedly, grateful that this little restaurant in Beaumont is open on a Sunday evening so that we can escape for a treat.
My knees and back are stiff and my hands, despite a thorough scrubbing, still look a little dirty after an afternoon crouched in the grass, planting out in the cutting garden. The zinnias and asters are finally tucked into their bed, the ranunculus corms from the greenhouse beds lifted and arranged in trays to dry out a little. A few more garden jobs scratched off the list.
At dusk, full of pizza, I walk over to close the greenhouse; the nights are still cool and the tomatoes like the warmth. The sun is just sinking behind the barn, it’s almost 10pm and a blackbird is singing a sweet solo from the top of the cedar tree, telling me it’s time for bed.
Monday 3rd June
A pale mist hangs over the fields, shrouding everything. It twists between the trees, and makes the morning air heavy. Monty bounds through the meadow, sending up golden clouds of grass pollen which collect on his damp fur and make him sneeze.
As the day heats up the mist thins. It’s warm as I cut sweetpeas, and cerinthe and another armful of cow parsley. The ranunculus are truly coming to an end now, I find that the outdoor crop is never as long-lasting as the indoor one. I wonder if there will be enough flowers to tide me over until the cosmos truly get going? They’re bulking out now, looking sturdier, but it might be another week or two until I have a crop of flowers. I cross my fingers for plenty of sweetpeas and nigella to stock my vases in the meantime.
Tuesday 4th June
The kitchen doors and windows are thrown open and the sun is pouring in, a sweet breeze blows in one door and out of the other and it feels like summer has finally arrived. Everything seems lighter and brighter all of a sudden, a burst of energy arriving with this sudden sense of a shift in seasons.
We seem to have a lot of courgettes in the fridge, so I grate half of one and fry it gently in a little olive oil with salt and pepper. There’s a flat cardboard crate of sweet cherry tomatoes too and I dice a handful with a small, sharp knife and drizzle them with olive oil and a little honey, salt and pepper.
I pour two whisked eggs over the now softened and golden courgette and slowly scramble them together over a low heat. There’s a slice of my favourite bûcheron bread in the toaster, charring gently at the edges. I pile on the courgette scrambled eggs and top it all off with the tomatoes - a summer breakfast to start the day.
Tim puts up some scaffolding planks over the cellar steps after lunch. The Constance Spry needs dead heading. Her moment of glory is coming to the end, just a handful or two of buds yet to burst. I balance on the wobbly wooden planks, watching where my feet step but also trying not to look down, as I snip off the faded flowers. Many have turned dusty and brown, their petals dried in clusters after being damaged by rain, balling up instead of falling prettily to the ground.
I fill the wheelbarrow twice with spent flowers, missing them already and regretting, as ever, that this rose only flowers once. Tim is mowing lawns, the mower engine rumbling as he trundles up and down the gîte garden and around the potager beds.
Hours pass swiftly in the sunshine and before we know it it’s already time to down tools and welcome our next guests, time to cook again, time to light candles and set the tables.
Wednesday 5th June
I climb down from my ladder, bringing with me a handful of crisp rose heads. The ground is scattered with pruning debris, but I leave it where it is. The boys are home, their half day of school done and we have pre-arranged garden plans.
Tim cuts the net from around the huge, round bale of straw. Together the boys push it along the fence of the gîte garden, the straw flaking off in neat chunks along the ground. According to the dossier the straw mulch needs to be 1m wide by 20cm deep. We’re preparing the ground for the hedge we want to lay this coming winter, the mulch is the first step.
The straw smells sweet and clean. It reminds me of hours spent playing in hay stacks as a child, leaping from high towers of bales and into piles of fresh straw, it brings back memories of days spent bale carting, hefting smaller rectangular bales into neat stacks before loading them into lorries, of spreading out clean bedding at the stables, banking the sides with a fork, after a morning of mucking out. So many memories locked in one simple scent.
The boys trample the straw flat, compacting it down, filling in gaps, evening out the deeper areas by carrying armfuls to the thinner ones. I wonder if this memory will come back to them in years to come when they catch the scent of a bale? We run out of straw half way around the fence. Alain says he’ll bring us another bale tomorrow.
I take some pictures of what we’ve done and email them to Samuele at the council for her approval. We’re hoping to qualify for a grant for our hedging work so I’m keen to check we’ve done it right. An out of office comes straight back to say she left her post in April, someone else will replace her in mid-June. I groan and bury my face in my hands in resignation, imagining having to jump through all of the hoops over again. I close the laptop, decide not to think about it and go back to pruning roses.
Thursday 6th June
My vases today are loose and wild, sweetpeas and Nigella with the jade leaves and tiny deep blue and purple bells of cerinthe nodding between them. More apple mint and cow parsley and some stems of sage and salvias. My fears at the loss of the ranunculus unfounded, I love these little posies, they might even be my favourite if the year so far.
I’m so engrossed in the flowers that until Alain starts jumping up and down at the kitchen window, waving his arms, I don’t notice him. No, I didn’t hear the tractor or his knocking over my audio book. He’s delivered another bale of straw for the hedge prep and I thank him.
Talk turns to gardens, Alain has built some new raised beds for vegetables and herbs and we discuss the prices at the garden centres in town, agreeing that they can be ridiculous. I try to explain that I order a lot of my plants online and that they are delivered to me, quite safely, in the post. He thinks I’m saying they’re delivered in their pots but have mispronounced pot and called him a slang word for my mate. We laugh at the confusion and I apologise again, for the thousandth time, about my terrible French.
I scatter my flowers around the house and turn on the oven. A fresh batch of granola, another of brownies and then on to dinner for six tonight.
Friday 7th June
In the woods the early morning air is filled with that first hint of lime blossom. I catch it on an in breath and my eyes widen in recognition. The sweet smell of June. I think I will always have to have a lime tree in my garden wherever I am. Wherever I live that scent will always bring me back here. Before long all of our limes will be in bloom and the air will be full of it, this though is just the first whisper filtering down through the trees.
It’s a beautiful morning, fresh and bright, the rising sun already warm. The new dawn rose is in flower at the back of the house, scrambling up between the shutters, its pale pink sprays of flowers opening out in beautiful curled ruffles to reveal a gold ring of pollen for the bees.
I linger in the garden for as long as I can, walking through the back meadow, taking it all in, while the rest of the house is still asleep or just thinking about waking up. But time is ticking and there’s breakfast to make, a second boy to see off to school and then the rooms and gîte to clean. Friday is always a busy day.
Saturday 8th June
We sit side by side at the kitchen island, two slices of randonneur bread each, Tim’s toasted, mine not, both smeared generously with butter. This fruit and nut stuffed bread is a Saturday morning tradition during our summer season. If Tim forgets to buy it I have been known to spend the morning a little surly. It’s sweet, but not too sweet, a salty but syrupy crust, soft but sturdy crumb, chewy pieces of dried fruit and every now and then there’s a satisfying hazelnut to crunch through. The butter is obligatory. You buy it by the chunk, the whole loaf is huge and our bakers only make it at weekends, you have to be quick to get your slice. It makes my Saturday mornings.
It’s a beautiful morning, the sun already streaming in through the open kitchen door. Penny is happy again, spending her days lying on the warm gravel or stretched out on the granite steps in the sunshine, toasting her old bones. When it gets too hot she stumbles over to the Japanese anemone bed and flops down in the shade of its broad leaves. All you can see of her is a pair of fluffy back legs and a tail, she reminds me of a drunkard passed out under a bush after a heavy night on the town.
The snapdragons have grown on beautifully in a week, they feel big enough to plant out in clusters in the back borders along with a few cosmos. The daffodil foliage is finally starting to fade, I tug gently on the yellowing leaves and any that come out easily go into the wheel barrow. Without their tangled mess I can see what spaces I have to fill.
The sun is beating down as I heft a bag of compost to the edge of the kitchen window border. I handball it into buckets and gingerly scatter a good layer around the plants. It’s been ages since I top dressed this border. It looks so neat and tidy with a layer of fresh soil. I hope I haven’t just created a smooth highway for the slugs to eat my plants though.
After a few hours of planting, mulching and daffodil leaf pulling I’m sticky and hot and of course, covered in mud again. I’m grateful as the cool shower water hits my hot skin. I steal half an hour in the shady peace of our bedroom before starting dinner prep. Whisking eggs, cream, sugar and vanilla, buttering ramekins, drizzle vegetables in olive oil, salt and pepper, griddling baguette slices, spreading apricot jam, stirring sauces. Each of these small tasks building over several hours into dinner for eight in the garden, under the festoon lights, with candles flickering and the crickets playing strings in the grass.
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A knob of butter and a tsp sugar well rubbed in your hands before washing them after gardening will clean and make them very soft, a trick my dad taught me he was a mechanic.
I'm enjoying this week's read while in the queue for the ferry back to the UK from Cherbourg. It was so lovely to meet you both and spend a few days enjoying the château and grounds - and of course your delicious food! Everything was superb and we really do hope to return. Thanks again and I look forward to next week's journal. Tx