Sunday 18th May
I’m hurrying to set the breakfast tables, making sure we’re ready dead on time, our guests need to leave at 9am sharp to make their channel crossing. Tim hasn’t long left for the boulangerie when I hear the car come back. I put down my tray and meet him halfway to the kitchen, concern written across his face. “There’s a huge tree down across the drive, it must have come down in the storm last night.”
I close my eyes, take a deep breath. The drive is our main route to the road. There is no other way out that our guests can take to leave. We have to get it cleared by 9am. But it’s 7.40am on a Sunday morning, we have a house full of guests to make breakfast for and the tree is too big for us to move ourselves.
Tim texts Alain, hoping to wake him gently. I gratefully pull out the stock of croissants and baguettes we keep in the freezer just-in-case. We have no way to get to the boulangerie now.
There’s no reply from Alain so Tim gets in the truck. Our only other route off the property is through the woods. But the main track in there is blocked by the last fallen tree that we haven’t yet had chance to clear away. Tim has to pick his way through the trees, driving down my narrow footpaths, gingerly weaving his way through the boggy woods on untested ground hoping not to get stuck.
I continue to set the tables, lighting the candles and getting breakfast ready. Gleaning comfort from the rhythm of my usual routine. I have learnt not to panic, to just carry on, keep moving forward. Each time this house and grounds throw us another challenge there is always a solution, you just have to stay calm and find it.
It’s a beautiful morning, the sun shining and the skies blue. The guests are out walking and running before breakfast, the news of the tree has already spread. They offer to help, to cycle for croissants and bread, ask for gloves to help with work on the tree. They’re all so kind. I thank them all, smile and tell them it will be fine - Tim and Alain will sort it, they can relax. My fingers are firmly crossed as I bustle back and forth between the salon and the kitchen. I really hope I’m right.
By 8.20am as I’m turning on the coffee machine I can hear the tractor and chainsaws. By 8.45am as I’m rushing back and forth with pots of tea and hot coffee, the trunk is cleared, a path forged across the drive, Alain is sitting in the kitchen and Tim is cooking him an English breakfast to say thank you. Eggs, bacon, mushrooms and fresh tomatoes on toast. The guests have warm flaky croissants and good crusty bread hot from the oven and we can wave them off by 9am as promised. I let out a long slow breath.
We ask ourselves time and again what we would do without Alain? If we would still be here if we didn’t have a neighbour who is always so kind and willing to help? Who will always come, with a wry smile and twinkle in his eye, when we need something. Even at 7.45am on a Sunday morning. “I know” he says, “When I hear a car early in the morning that someone needs help. It’s what we do in the countryside.”
I think I can safely say that without Alain we would have packed our bags years ago. Without his help and support this place might have been too much, navigating France might have been impossible, it all might just have beaten us. We will always be in his debt, forever grateful that we have him on our side.
Monday 20th May
The nights are shortening, the sun, like us, rising earlier and earlier and going to bed later and later. I’ve begun closing our bedroom shutters again, plunging our room into darkness so we can get as much sleep as we can.
Each morning I try to guess the colour of the sky by the thin slivers of light that filter through the louvred wooden slats. Grey or blue? I open the shutters to the morning, and stand there in the open window, my hands resting on the flaking paint of the wrought iron garde corps, looking out over the garden, breathing in the morning air, watching the mist rise from the fields or the sun light making the leaves glow. It’s a favourite morning moment. I try to savour it every day, soaking up the bright morning light, even if I can only spare a few breaths of time to stand here.
Another bank holiday. The boys beg for pancakes, so once breakfast is organised for our guests I whisk together flour, eggs and milk. I ladle the batter into the butter foaming in the pan, swirling it out thinly for the crispy, lacy edges we all love. We spread them with raspberry jam and roll them up, eating quickly while they’re still warm from the pan.
I spend the afternoon in bed. A cold I’ve been battling all weekend taking it out of me. I try to sleep but a storm is raging outside, thunder rolling around and around us, black clouds darkening the sky, more rain falling. I hope the rest of our trees hold fast. With rest but no sleep, I have just enough energy to cook dinner for our guests before getting back into bed, hopeful that a good night’s sleep might see me better.
Tuesday 21st May
Each time I walk past the fallen tree on the drive I stand in awe of it. It looks as if it just lost its footing, slipped down the bank of the ditch and over balanced. There are no torn roots, no snapped trunk, just a tree displaced. It’s as if the sodden ground was too wet and soft to help it stay upright anymore, so it just let go. The canopy lies in the field, half the trunk in the ditch, the other half Alain carried to the farm yard with the tractor. We are still in discussions as to whether it’s a beech or a hornbeam.
I feel brighter today, the cold starting to shift. But I force myself to slow down, to have another afternoon to rest once all the essential jobs are done. A slow walk first though, just down the drive and around the garden, where to roses are in full bloom, breathtaking. Worth every thorn in every finger, worth the hours of pruning and weaving and tying in. I sniff each one, each one throwing out a slightly different perfume, but all beautiful in their own right. Gertrude Jekyll though and Brother Cadfael are the scents I love the best. Tomorrow I promise myself I will get into the garden.
Wednesday 22nd May
I wake up feeling well, the worst of the cold gone, my energy levels returning to normal. The forecast is fine and I am itching to get into the garden. I love Wednesdays, we don’t allow guests to arrive and check-in on Wednesdays and we don’t serve dinner either, so once we’ve cleared breakfast and cleaned the rooms for the guests staying over we are free to do other jobs.
I plant out the rest of the dahlias, another full bed of pinks, apricots and oranges. There are just a few stragglers left in the cold frames, weedy plants that haven’t bulked up much. I’ll nurse them on and see if they come to anything, but they may not make it now.
From nowhere a storm blows in, huge raindrops pummelling down, drumming on the poly tunnel roof where Monty and I have run for shelter. While we wait it out I clear the fading foliage of the ranunculus and plant my tomato plants in the spaces in the bed, tucking some baby basil plants along the front.
The sun is back so I kneel in the damp grass to plant out my phlox, spacing them in between the scabious. The second sowing of sunflowers go out too. I notice some self-sown larkspur seedlings in the snapdragon bed, so I carefully lift them, wiggling the trowel under tge soil to bring up their whole root ball. I transfer them to the lacklustre larkspur bed, hopefully these babies won’t be eaten by the slugs and I might get a crop of larkspur after all.
It’s late afternoon, the sun slanting across the garden, it all looks so neat and tidy. The greenhouse swept out, seed trays emptied and stacked, the next seedlings lined up, hardening off outside. Everything aches, but that good, satisfying ache that comes from a day of hard work in the garden.
Thursday 23rd May
A flower day - I gather up every vase in the house, carrying them on heavy trays back to the kitchen. I work through them, taking out every flower, assessing whether it’s likely to last until Monday (the next flower day). If it makes the cut I trim its stem, a fresh snip to allow more water to the flower head. I wash out every vase and fill each with fresh, cold water. The saved flowers and foliage get arranged together, then I can see how many vases I still have to fill.
My little garden trolley rattles as I pull it across the lawn, the water sloshing in the buckets. I cut ranunculus from the outside bed, the first sweet peas that are climbing the pig wire fence up the side of the polytunnel, the darkest ones flowering first, deep pinks and burgundies. A few spires of purple from the sage bush, a scattering of nigella stars and a some foxgloves too.
From the shrub bed I take some mock orange, then I pull the now heavy trolley to the back of the house for a few roses and some apple mint. There is nothing quite like the scent of sweetpeas and mint. It’s one of my favourite combinations. I drink it in, sweet and slightly anise, fresh and just so lovely.
Each vase is full again. The biggest, full of foxgloves and mock orange, I sit on the salon fireplace, the rest are scattered through every room in the house. Little posies from the garden in every corner.
I sweep up the debris from the kitchen floor, piling it into the wheelbarrow for the compost heap. Then I’m back to making beds, sorting linens, washing towels and planning menus for dinner for 10 tonight.
Friday 24th May
Friday is its usual busy self. We wave off guests, clean and change rooms, clean the gîte from top to bottom. This week though there is no one coming to stay in the gîte, the guests sadly having to cancel last-minute due to ill health. It’s strange to see it empty for a week, but it’s just too last-minute for anyone else to fill it.
Mid-morning Laurie’s school call and ask us to collect him, he has a slight temperature and a headache (and several lessons that he doesn’t really enjoy). I leave Tim and Nicky cleaning and drive to pick him up. He is soon tucked up in bed, napping his way through what should be French and music.
I spend the afternoon scrubbing copper pans, cleaning away tarnished layers to get to the shiny, pinkish copper underneath. Two sets of pans sparkling and ready to go into our little shop.
We have been putting off opening the ramshackle little shop in the garden because of all the rain. It’s not quite water tight, and with storms blowing in every afternoon it’s felt too risky. We’ve tucked most of the stock under the main stairs of the house instead to keep it safe, guests ducking under there by the big hall window to shop. The weather is starting to change though, so over the next week or so I’m hoping to sweep away the cobwebs, moss and winter debris and get our little garden brocante open for the season. The pans are the first step.
Saturday 25th May
It’s one of those truly beautiful spring mornings, the air sweet and warm, blue skies threaded with gossamer thin clouds, birds flitting everywhere. You can’t help but open your arms to it, stretching to meet it, breathing it in.
I leave Tim in charge of cleaning rooms to run errands. I twist my way down country lanes to drop Rufus at a friend’s house. Then I work my way between fields of crops shimmering green with their new shoots of maize, travelling the roads to the hardware store for compost and courgette plants that haven’t been eaten by slugs like mine. Then to another village for the pharmacy, where I manage an in-depth discussion about my medication all in French.
There is nothing quite like a successful conversation in your second language to bolster morale. I often rehearse and rehearse what I want to say in my head and then when I come to speak it all comes out in a confused, anxious jumble or the person I’m talking to chooses not to understand me, even though I’m sure I’ve explained myself clearly. Today though I confidently ask for what I need, explain why and leave with an extra box of tablets just as I wanted.
I drive home with a smile on my face, proud that this tiny errand is complete. It seems slightly ridiculous that I should be quite so proud of a trip to a pharmacy, but often the simplest of tasks can feel insurmountable when you don’t speak a language fluently.
There are some days that I feel so overwhelmed by the thought of trying to deal with tiny admin tasks that I put them off and off until I really can’t avoid them anymore. My few encounters with unhelpful people, unwilling to be patient as I stumble through my words, or the moments when I have failed to make myself understood and have had to leave, red faced and embarrassed, have knocked my confidence so much, that at times I dread leaving the safety of home. I get angry with myself for not dedicating more time to learning French, and wish it would come more easily.
But then there are these days, when it all works, my confidence soars and I’m reminded that I can do it and that I just have to keep trying. These are the good French days, and I cling to this feeling for as long as it lasts.
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Broken egg shell and coffee grounds spread on top of garden slugs don’t like that’s what I use no slug problem
Hurrah for Alain, he is the best neighbour ever! I hope he read your accolade of him.
I know what you mean about the difficulties managing a second language and the impact of this on your self esteem. A few weeks ago in Spain I felt so proud of myself after I successfully telephoned and had a full conversation in Spanish with the doctor there. I felt it was such a personal achievement.
Your garden is very impressive and what stunning roses you have. I don’t know what I do wrong but they are all so spindly.