Sunday 18th August
I duck under the branches of the fig trees, the wide, rough leaves scuffing the skin of my arms, their sweet, musky, woodsy scent rising as I brush past them. I’m searching for ripe fruit, soft and plump, the flesh just turning a dusky purple-brown. Fig picking is always slightly fraught, it’s best done early in the day, before the heat rises and the wasps wake up. I’ve learnt not to wrap my whole hand around a fig, but to pluck them first with my finger tips, twisting them slightly so I can see all sides, checking as I do for burrowing wasps, drunkenly feasting on the ripe pink flesh. I pick two kilos in ten minutes, filling a bucket almost to the brim.
There’s no time today to cook them, I want to be in the garden, to dead head the roses that have been making me sad all week and tidy up the lavender. We’ve reached that time of year when the garden either looks abundantly floppy or slightly scruffy, depending on your perspective. I choose to see ragged abundance and make my peace with it.
I’m craving the comfort of crumble, and there’s half a punnet of plums and a bucket of apples from the poor over-burdened baby apple tree. So I make two small crumbles, plum for me and apple for everyone else. The apples are not quite ripe, their flesh sharp, so I mix them with some sweet eaters from the fridge and add some extra sugar.
As they bake Alain arrives. He’s making a pudding in his instant pot, a crème arlequin, but he’s got half way through and realised he doesn’t have any eggs, or in fact any cornflour. I find him four eggs and weigh out the cornflour. He stays for a beer with Tim, and then another and then for dinner, sitting at the kitchen table with us all, listening to the boys be cheeky to us in French as we scramble to keep up with the conversation.
Monday 19th August
There’s a snap in the air, a gorgeous welcome chill. It’s still warm enough to walk in shorts and a t-shirt but there are goosebumps on my arms. The air is full of mist, steaming from dew-damp fields, the sky a soft grey with a painterly wash of dirty pink.
I walk out from under the trees lining the drive and look across the meadow, the trees on the field line are just taking shape against the sky, dark silhouettes slowly gaining details. Beside my favourite tree is the sun, a perfect red dot rising into the hazy sky, glowing with a strange almost malevolence, as if it’s fighting with its cloudy captor to be allowed to release its light and bring colour to the day.
Against the blank sky the birds are gathering on the telegraph wires. Just small groups for now, tentative gatherings, the elders perhaps, making plans, discussing routes, thinking about beginning to move on. More signs that summer is starting to dwindle.
I’m arranging the flowers when Alain arrives back in the kitchen. He’d planned, he says to bring us some crème arlequin to say thanks for the eggs and for dinner, but when he got home he realised that he didn’t have the cream he needed to make it either. What ingredients did you actually have in the end? I ask. The sugar and vanilla, he says with a laugh.
Tuesday 20th August
The breakfast trays are getting heavier, my back burning between my shoulders with the effort of hefting them to and from the salon each morning. After six months of carrying them you’d think my muscles would be well versed. But visiting children add extra weight, the plates stacked higher than usual, the house full, every bed taken with families travelling in the school holidays.
Once the last breakfast dish is cleared today and the trays are stacked neatly back in the cupboard, I stand slicing figs into the preserving pan. I dowse them in sugar and tuck a sprig of rosemary in to infuse as the sugar melts and the juices run over a low heats
Jean-Marc comes trundling up the drive in his little tractor, a trailer full of logs to deliver to the barn. A good 12 or so stères of dry oak to fuel the Rayburn for the first part of the winter. He’ll bring us more in a few weeks. Tim helps him unload the metre long logs that we’ll cut down into smaller lengths to fit the fire box.
They come back to the kitchen for coffee. Arms aching from lifting logs. My jars of fig confit are lined up, cooling on the side. As I make a batch of brownies and another of granola, talk turns to logging and tree felling - winter work.
We have a lot of fallen trees to process and some dead ones to take down. We need an awful lot of firewood to keep the house warm through the winter months. Tim rubs his arms unconsciously as he talks, and I remember that the winter muscles are different to the summer ones. Soon my back will ache in a different place, the chores and the work shifting as the seasons change.
Wednesday 21st August
We’ve been married 15 years today. In some ways it doesn’t feel like 15 years, the time slipping swiftly away, and in other ways it does, so much has happened in that time, so many changes. It isn’t really 15 years though, because we spent eight years together before getting married too. We’ve been more with each other now than we’ve been without each other. Over half of our lives together, and these days we’re together all-day-every-day. Some days I wonder just how it works? How we don’t drive each other completely crazy? But somehow it does works. We just muddle along in our own different ways side-by-side, always together.
We escape the house and the chores for a while and take the boys out for pizza to celebrate. A brief interlude of busy town, soaking up a little bustle and life, (what little there is to have in August anyway), wandering the cobbled streets of the old town, hand-in-hand, people watching, before heading home again to the countryside.
My stomach is tight with pizza, I walk it off, twisting through the woods and out along the drive to the top field. The swallows are swirling, spinning up on the air currants, circling and swooping down for the bugs. I stand still and watch them dance around me, listen to their excited, insistent chirrups.
I yawn and stretch in the warmth of the sun, catching the breeze in my outstretched arms. I feel suddenly tired and turn towards home, to the cool darkness of our bedroom and a restorative afternoon nap.
In the cool of the early evening I prune the tomatoes, taming wayward vines and side shoots, hoping to encourage some more fruit to set. My hands green and sticky with tomato sap.
Tim has popped to help Alain with something and comes driving home slowly, a bowl of crème arlequin in the passenger seat. All the ingredients finally amassed into a rich, custardy pudding, half vanilla, half chocolate, a treat to end the day.
Thursday 22nd August
I love to walk before breakfast, letting the fresh air and daylight properly wake me up. Monty capers at my side as I pull on my trainers, impatient to be out, even though dawn is just slipping into the garden, the first grey light swelling over the horizon.
It’s misty and cool today, the ducks calling from the pond in François’ field. The air smells damp and earthy, my warm breath billows in clouds in the chill air. August is moving on.
Usually by now our thoughts and conversations have turned to winter projects. We start to plan what renovation work we want to get done, begin to measure things, assess the work we need to do. But Tim lets the subject slide away when I bring it up. Deftly switching it to something else, unable to contemplate another winter of renovation work.
I think about this as I walk. Trying to work out how to make it less consuming? Wondering how we can make progress but also give ourselves some proper time off?The crumbly state of our side of the house definitely bothers me more than anyone else. I am desperate for a proper sitting room. For somewhere clean and cosy to curl up on a Sunday afternoon, on a deep comfortable sofa in front of a slowly ticking fire. But there are so many smaller projects that have to happen first before that one can even start. It could be years yet before that room is a reality.
If we put off the smaller projects though, it will be even longer before our side of the house truly feels like a home. And after almost seven years I’m ready for it to look and feel like a proper home for us. As I walk I search for ways to make the small projects simpler and easier, so that this winter has more balance and rest in it, less hard slog until the next guest season starts.
My walk isn’t long enough to find solutions, I have to get back, the breakfast tables are calling and the rest of the day disappears to the flower pick, room cleaning, dinner prep and caring for our guests. There’s no time to think properly just yet.
Friday 23rd August
There’s a brisk westerly wind chasing across the fields, a wind full of mist and mizzle, it’s not so much raining as blowing low-slung cloud. My hair is beaded with moisture, doubled in volume in seconds like a red, frizzing cloud around my face, my clothes and skin sheened with a fine veil of tiny water droplets.
The cloud of mist is soon blown away, but the wind is still tugging at the trees, strong enough to tear leaves from the branches and send them skittering across the terrace, littering the lawn with leaves, sycamore keys and linden seeds.
The sun when she arrives though is hot, peeping out from behind the clouds to remind us intermittently that it is in fact still August. We pull the shutters closed to keep the house cool, even though the sun is in and out, turning her heat on and off.
In the gloom of the shuttered house we run around making beds and cleaning rooms. A full house and gîte clean today, our bodies in constant motion as we work our way from job-to-job.
I love to do a final sweep of the rooms, walking around each one, making sure everything is where it should be for our guess. I soak up the peace and cleanliness of each one before I go back to the noise and crumbling chaos of our side of the house. One day, one day, my side will match.
Saturday 24th August
A grey morning, the sky lumpen and porridgy. The wind is soft today, definitely more than a breeze where the fields open out, a steady shushing wind that flows over me, blowing away the nighttime grogginess, trying to wake me up and ready me for another day on my feet. I hang on to these walks, these peaceful moments to myself.
The green wall of maize at the end of drive is now so tall that I can no longer see the Donjon at Ballon perched on its hill. My world has shrunk behind this wall. When you drive through the country lanes they feel like crop tunnels, the fields enclosing you on both sides, landmarks lost to towering cereals. It will be a while yet before the combines are back and the land opens up again, before the little houses across the fields come back into view, the wet spring making sowing late, the farmers hoping for an Indian summer to ripen everything up.
I’d planned to garden in the scant hour or so I have to myself today, but a storm blows in, the rain falling diagonally across the garden, trees bending in the wind. I watch from the bedroom window, willing the leaf-laden trees to hang on to their branches, to curl their roots deeply into the ground and cling on.
Monty, Tilly and I do a quick walk of the grounds while the peppers, aubergines, courgettes and onions slowly roast for tonight’s main course, turning sweet and charred in the oven. We check for fallen trees and snapped branches, but thankfully there are none. All trees still standing and accounted for, still protecting the house from the strength of summer storms. Above us the swallows swirl, dancing on warm air rising between the avenues of limes. I could stand here all evening watching them, but there are vegetables roasting, chicken to cook and apricot brioches to bake.
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I love the relationship you and Tim have with Alain, everyone needs a neighbour like him and everyone needs a neighbour like you two.
Happy belated anniversary to you both! We also celebrate in the month of August. A great month to be married. This year we celebrated 49 years. That is a long time. I asked Glenn what he was buying me for my anniversary. His reply was: IM TAKING YOU TO FRANCE…TO THE CHATEAU. How lucky I am for 49 years with him, and to finally be able to check off my #1 bucket list trip. We can’t wait to gather at the CHATEAU DE LA RUCHE, meet you, and have a relaxing week. Soon…very soon!