Sunday 22nd June
Old stone walls and the tommette floor help to keep the garden workshop cool, cool enough to work in for a little while as temperature of the day starts to climb. The shutter is pulled across its tall window, but the warm summer light pours in through the top of the stable door. Mum and Dad spent a morning last week sweeping floors and wiping down shelves in here, helping us to inch it closer to being finished.
I hear the truck rumble from across the garden, Dad and Tim arrive with an old table from the salle de chasse. I bought this table for the gîte kitchen, but it was just a little too small and didn’t look quite right. I knew I’d find a home for it eventually so we tucked it in the salle de chasse with all the other old furniture, jumbled brocante finds and dusty pieces from the house that still need a home.
It’s a sturdy table, with a thick, old wooden top that’s worn and curved in places by years of use, and it fits perfectly in the centre of garden workshop, sitting solidly in the middle of the floor. There’s still plenty of room to move around it, but now there’s extra work space for potting up seedlings, arranging flowers and teaching workshops.
I look around, planning in my mind all the finishing touches this room needs to be done. It’s still rough around the edges, but there’s a certain charm to it that will only be more beautiful once I’ve filled it with flowers and pots and props.
Monday 23rd June
The golden grasses in the meadow beside the lake have grown so tall that we can’t see Mum and Dad’s car as they drive away. We stand at the side of the lake waving anyway, hoping they might catch a glimpse of us jumping up and down to get above the roses, which already need another round of deadheading. The horn beeps, and I wonder if they’ve seen us or just know that we’ll be there anyway, as we always are when it’s time to say goodbye.
There’s so much work to do in the garden, but once breakfast is cleared, the rooms are cleaned, the flowers are done and the shopping is packed away it’s mid-afternoon. The skies have cleared, the sun is beating fiercely down and it’s too hot to be working outside.
The heat is becoming frustrating, I feel like I’m wasting precious time trapped inside behind the shutters in the gloom. Each morning the weeds seem to get taller, more prolific, each afternoon I hope for clouds so I can deadhead roses or clear rye grass. Today the sky stays obstinately blue and I have to wait it out behind the shutters, pottering inside until the evening arrives with a cool breeze that blows through the kitchen as I cook.
Tuesday 24th June
I wince as a thorn snatches at the skin of my bare shin, my leg jerks back involuntarily from the pain, driving another spike into the back of my knee. I yelp and curse, muttering about the weather being too hot for deadheading roses. I watch the bead of red blood gather on my shin, longing for my jeans.
I’m stealing time in the garden when I can, ten minutes here, half an hour there, the cloudy moments or the breezy ones between other jobs, or before it gets too unbearably hot again. I snip every rose I can reach in the shade of the house, but I’m not quick enough to get the ladder up before the sun finds my hiding place in the shade and I have to give up.
Inside Tilly is snarling and yowling, her long tabby fur standing on end as she backs away from us into a corner. Her eyes are wide and pain is crisscrossing her little face, her tail is hanging limply behind her, dangling slightly to the left. If we touch her back she hisses.
I wait nervously at home, baking brownies and welcoming our guests, while Tim and Laurie take her to the vets. Her tail isn’t broken as we feared, but she has large, infected cut on back leg, perhaps a bite or a deep gash from falling from a tree.
She comes home with a cone tied around her head with a neat bow, a hefty dose of painkillers to help her rest and instructions to keep her in for a few days. We make her a nest on the top floor, the only place that she can’t escape from, Laurie sets up camp there too, keeping her company, sleeping over, making sure she’s getting better.
Wednesday 25th June
I arch my back and stretch my arms, rolling my shoulders and twisting in my chair. I’m stiff after too many hours at the laptop, trying to firm up plans for next year’s retreats and thinking about the finishing touches for this year’s. Time always passes too quickly for my admin list, I never seem to get quite enough done between the garden, guests and writing to ease the pressure.
I plan itineraries and timings, goodie bags and menus and spend a good thirty minutes panicking that this continuous hot weather will ruin the flowers and there’ll be nothing left to cut. Time runs away from me in the end, the afternoon disappearing into my inbox. I give up and leave the rest for another day.
As the evening starts to cool I melt butter, Demerara sugar and a thick trickle of golden syrup in a pan. I stir oats through the smooth, buttery caramel and press them out into a lined tin, letting them bake in the oven until golden and brown. Rufus has exams for the next two days, his final days at collège coming to a close and flapjacks have become an exam day tradition. Something a little sweet, a little hearty to fill him up in case school lunches don’t do the job. I pack them in a little box and tuck them into his bag for tomorrow.
Thursday 26th June
There’s just the barest hint of lime blossom now, it sits in little pockets in the woods and down the drive, the very shadiest of trees finally in flower. I drink it in as I walk, soaking it up because I know it will soon be gone and I’ll have to wait a whole year to smell it again. I try to capture the cool of the morning too, the freshness of the air on my skin, knowing all too well that the heat will soon start to build.
I don’t have to wait long, by mid-morning the sun is beating down, and I find that my sweetpeas have fried and shrivelled in the heat, giving up and going to seed, the whole crop crisping over night, leaves blanched and dried. The irrigation is struggling, pipes blocking, plants looking dry. I stand in the full sun watering at completely the wrong time of day, feeling too anxious to wait until this evening in case the cosmos or the scabious start to curl and crisp too.
I tug my flower cart back to the house, buckets full of snapdragons, cosmos and phlox, but without any sweetpeas, my face flushed, my hands clammy. I’m grumpy, worrying everything is going to die in this wretched heat, cross that I’ve just had to spend an hour I don’t really have watering in the midday heat.
Tim reads my mood, but thankfully sees the anger for what it is; fear that come our floral retreat in August there won’t be any flowers. He puts away the last of the shopping and then disappears out into the hot garden to replace as much irrigation pipe as he can with what he has in his workshop, and I love him for it.
Friday 27th June
The air is still, the trees unmoving, crows caw from their tree-top perches, cackling at me as I walk down the drive, which has been bronzed by the falling pollen and dried blossoms of the lime trees and scattered with yellow leaves by the hot wind that blew up last night.
In the stillness any movement quickly draws your eye, I see a shift in the corner of my vision and watch two deer climb down the steep sloping bank into the meadow pond to drink side-by-side.
They don’t notice me until I glance at my watch, they hesitate, sniffing the air, watch me start to walk, move a little, stop, watch me again and then turn in leaps and bounds for the cover of the hedgerow, white tails flashing as if in goodbye.
Back at the house we work the shutters to keep things cool. A complex dance of openings and closing to capture any cool breeze but keep out the brutal sun. The hinges and mechanisms creak and grind in protest and I mentally add “grease hinges and mechanisms” to our winter list.
By late morning all is dark, the hatches battened down against the heat. It’s only in the late afternoon as the guests begin to arrive that we open things up again. I stand at the ironing board in the kitchen, a fan at my back ironing napkins one after the other, the steam from the iron being blown in clouds across the kitchen as the fan cycles back and forth. As I work I watch the still garden through the window, searching for movement, this time the glint of metal in the sunshine, a car arriving with our next guests.
Saturday 28th June
A pink tinge of light catches on the edge of the shutters, the promise of a golden sunrise if I get up fast enough to see it. I pull on shorts and yesterday’s t-shirt, tie my laces as fast as I can and Monty and I are out into the garden, welcomed by a mist rising from the fields, shimmering over the grass as the earth steams.
It’s quiet, so so quiet, no rumble of tractors or far distant traffic, the school holidays are here and it feels like our little corner of France has let out a long, relaxing breath. No trains, no homework, no school run hustle for two whole months.
I stand and watch the damsel flies dancing in the long grasses, their blue-black wings catching in patches of sunlight, shining with iridescence in the rays of the sun.
It’s another hot day. We make beds and clean rooms, manage shutters and try as best we can to keep everywhere cool. The kitchen is dark all day, but I’m grateful for it later as I stand over the hot griddle pan waiting for thin strips of courgettes to char and soften.
Cherry tomatoes are blistering in a pan with olive oil, garlic and the tiniest hint of chilli. White wine sizzles and spits as it hits the skillet, bubbling around the garlicky tomatoes to make a sauce.
Fillets of cod turn golden in a hot pan foaming with butter and I slip them into the oven to cook through. I’m almost done, it’s almost time to turn out the gas flame, to turn off the ovens.
A tangle of griddled courgettes on the plate, the garlicky white wine tomatoes and the golden, buttery cod on top. Pudding is already made, so I wash up, wipe the worktops, clean the cooker, set the breakfast trays and finally untie my apron strings. I feel my body sigh with relief as the apron slips away, reading the signal that it’s time now to rest and sleep before it all starts again tomorrow.
Previous posts you might have missed…
The first few weeks
We arrived with our lives in a 7.5t truck. Everything we owned packed up in boxes. Every inch of space taken, like a giant game of Tetris. We’d been living out of suitcases all summer long, a six week gap between homes.
A château with no kitchen
Our kitchen is home to a very well-known piece of worktop. Aside from the colour of the paint in the salon, the worktop is the thing we are asked about most. But the damage that happened on the television was nothing compared to what came before it. The story of our kitchen takes some time for the telling, it is a room that was born from nothing, with nothing but it is the room in our house that I love the most and after almost six years here and I can say that I think it’s finally finished.
La vie du château
Sunday 25th May
I sit back on my heels and brush the hair from my eyes with the back of a muddy hand. I have half-filled a bed with dahlia plants, the rest of the pots are neatly lined up in alternating, offset rows of three and then two, patiently waiting to be planted out too.
Thank you for another beautiful read! Please don't stress over the flowers for the workshop, our group of 5 can share, watch, use greens, or make flowers out of paper to participate. We are just so looking forward to being together in your beautiful space. We are family and the best of friends so we will have a great time no matter what! We are delighted you came up with such a great idea and looks forward to learning about growing as well as arranging flowers. See you in August!
That cod looks sooooo good 🙂