Sunday 25th August
The compost runs through my fingers, I pull the unmixed edges into the middle of the pile, scattering the tiny pieces of grit through the soil to improve drainage. I scoop the mixture of compost and grit up between my hands and start to fill my 40 cell seed trays, smoothing the soil evenly into each tiny cell.
I sow what’s left of this year’s snapdragon seeds from their tattered packets. Every year I promise myself I won’t do this, try to remind myself that my spring sown snaps are quicker. But I can’t resist and I’m starting a little earlier this year, seeing if they’ll jump-start, seeing if I can bulk out the seedlings a little before the shorter, colder days set in. Then I can over-winter them in the greenhouse and get an earlier crop next summer. We’ll see.
I sow clary sage, sweet Williams and sweet rocket too. Flowers for late spring, although I might be a bit late sowing these, it depends on what you read. The greenhouse is warm, a gentle breeze blowing through it from door-to-door. The sun is starting to sink and I’m soaking up the peace, soothing my nerves after an afternoon at the swimming pool with the boys.
The summer holidays are almost over, so we jumped in the waves, got dunked in the rapids and bobbed about for an hour or so, snatching some time together before we start juggling school and guests for the next month. One more week of the boys at home, then we’re back to buses and trains, timetables and homework.
Monday 26th August
It’s the time of the spiders. The barbed wire fence that divides the drive from the cow meadow is strung with webs, each one picked out with glistening drops of dew. They sparkle as the sun rises behind them through the mist, each one intricate and perfectly imperfect, their makers hidden away in the hedgerows somewhere.
I don’t mind spiders, which is fortunate at this time of year. As I walk along the drive and through the woods first thing in the morning, strands of spider silk catch in my hair or gently pull across my skin, snapping at my touch. Thin spider highways stretched from the treetops to the hedgerows, a complex network that helps them travel from one place to another. I brush them away with my hands, sometimes waving my arms in front of me as I walk. I must look a picture.
Mondays are always busy, the usual juggle of flowers, room cleaning, laundry runs and shopping. This one made extra tricky as we tiptoe around guests with poorly children, scooping up bedding that needs washing after a night of illness - perhaps my least favourite aspect of this job. I bundle it into a hot wash rather than send it onto the poor folk at the laundry, and Nicki and I stretch fresh clean sheets over the beds. Hoping beyond hope that it’s not contagious. We do not have time to be ill.
Tuesday 27th August
I am methodically working through the ironing pile when Jean arrives. Stacks of neatly pressed linen napkins gradually growing on the kitchen table, as the tangle of crumpled and creased ones slowly diminishes. I move on to our bed sheets (these sadly don’t get sent to the laundry so if I want them ironed I have to do it myself), as Tim pours a cold beer for Jean.
Jean always pops in on a late afternoon in August. He has the whole month off and spends it in his garden pottering about, getting on with jobs at home and making visits to friends. Jean was our electrician, spending the best part of six months here on and off, throughout our first winter when we destroyed the house entirely to completely re-wire and re-plumb the whole place.
He arrived the first day with a pocket French-to-English dictionary, fully determined that we would somehow understand one another. We all worked side-by-side for months. Jean teaching us all sorts of things from how to mix French plaster and fill cracks in walls, to the history of the Napoleonic wars and huge swathes of vocabulary.
He would arrive each day at 8am on the dot, down tools at midday for lunch, return at 2pm and work until 5pm, never a moment longer. He would sit child-like on the floor, knees together, feet splayed out behind him, channelling in sockets for hours at a time, leaving me in awe of the flexibility of his hips. He’s never allowed me to take one photo of him, doesn’t have a mobile phone and is endlessly loved by Monty and the cats.
He seems to love this place, looking back fondly to our morning coffee breaks when we would sit by the kitchen fire trying desperately to get warm, having weird conversations in Franglais, all trying to make ourselves understood and invariably ending up in a complete mess.
We talk about gardens, swapping stories about the profusion of slugs and the strange lack of butterflies, wasps and hornets this year. We count down the years until he can retire, three more to go, and sympathise with his aching joints and sore shoulders. As we wave him off we promise to visit him in the quiet months, when we aren’t so tied down with work.
The kitchen table is full now with piles of neatly ironed sheets and napkins. I sweep them all into baskets so we can eat the meal Tim has been cooking while we talked. Then we clear the kitchen and start on the grazing boards for tonight’s guests. All the jobs falling into place, another busy day almost done.
Wednesday 28th August
We’re woken by the bat, beating its wings against the mosquito net over our bed. I lie still, willing it to fly off, back through the window from which it came, the window that I forgot to close the shutters on at bed time because I was watching the sun sink behind the trees, watching the sky turn shades of pink, purple, orange and gold, as if it was leeching the colours from the garden, stealing them off into the night.
Tim is the brave one when it comes to bats, he is up, opening windows and covering every shred of light in the room so the bat can find its way out again. I lie still, waiting for silence to return again, then I get up to close the shutters to stop a repeat performance. I stand at the window momentarily to stare at the stars which are strewn brightly across the inky black sky, a whole galaxy spread out before me, waiting for the moon to rise.
Sleep takes a long while to return and I’m woken by Tim’s alarm clock, a good hour after I’m usually up. Groggily I make my way to the kitchen where Monty huffs grumpily, our morning walk missed.
It’s a hot day, too hot to garden on a free afternoon. Behind the shutters, in the cool gloom we clean our side if the house, straightening things up, getting organised before it’s time to go back-to-school.
Monty and I walk late in the day, the early evening air feels soft as we meander slowly along the drive, it’s hot but not fierce or stifling, just still and languid. I try to capture the feeling of the gentle heat soaking into my skin, warming my bones, easing achy joints. Saving the feeling of summer for the cooler days to come.
Thursday 29th August
Kate and Charlie arrive mid-afternoon, stopping in for a night on their way home from a holiday through France. They bring stories from home and we sit in the kitchen chatting as our kids and theirs get to know one another again through games of manhunt and ping-pong.
I make grazing boards for our guests as we talk, slicing up croissants and turning them into crostini with a drizzle of olive oil and a sprinkle of salt. They bake for eight minutes in the oven until crisp and golden and are tucked onto the boards with wedges of cheese, ruffles of charcuterie, a baked Camembert drizzled with honey and plenty of crudités for dipping and crunching.
We bake pizzas and I make a salad of homegrown tomatoes, creamy mozzarella, sweet peaches and basil with a balsamic and Dijon vinaigrette. After all the work is done we eat late in the kitchen, while the guests enjoy the terrace outside, kids at the table, adults piled around the island. We really need to find a way to make a little bit of private garden for ourselves, just for the rare moments like these when it would be nice to be outside.
Friday 30th August
The rain falls in a steady stream all day, drenching the garden, making us run between the house and the gîte, clean towels and sheets one way, those for the laundry the other. Making beds, cleaning bathrooms, getting everything ready for another contingent of guests. The cats drape themselves around the house, glaring at us if we dare to wake them up. I long to swap places.
There’s been no time for gardening this week. Each time I’ve had a spare moment for weeds between other chores it’s been too hot or too wet. I tug at bind weed strands as I run to down to the cellar in the rain, or quickly pull out a few easy weeds from the gravel as I pass, but it’s not possible to do anymore without a drenching or a baking. I stare out of the window at them all in frustration. If only we had help with the garden.
Saturday 31st August
The sky is a blanket of grey, hanging heavy with the weight of rain. Monty, Margot and I walk underneath the leaden skies, willing them to hold until we get back to the house.
I need every candle at breakfast this morning, the gloom that’s seeping into every corner chased away by the flickering flames. The salon smells of warm bread and buttery pastries and my stomach is growling.
The boys keep pulling sad faces and saying things like, “two more days of freedom” and “the holidays are almost over, let me just lie here and watch tv all day”. They beg for pancakes and favourite foods as if it’s some kind of last supper.
I whisk up eggs, flour and milk and swirl the batter around a buttery pan, a stack of English pancakes filled with raspberry jam for their breakfast.
Later, once the rain and has stopped, the beds are made and changed, towels folded, laundry bagged, and new guests welcomed, I roast a chicken for their tea and we eat it with cous-cous and tomatoes from the garden, drizzled with a balsamic dressing.
Then I tell them that while it might be the penultimate day of the holidays they still have to clear the table and empty the dishwashers because I have dinner to cook for our guests. There are groans, but they do it anyway before sloping off for more tv and video games.
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Beautiful read as always.. I’m so excited as next week we will actually be staying in Maurice house and so looking forward to it .. have a good week.🌺🌺
I loved the description of the boys and the last days off before school begins. I think we have all felt that way, and our children too. It’s hard to get back into the “swing of the old routine!”
When I was young, my mom used to hang the American flag 🇺🇸 outside on the front of our house, saying…FREE AT LAST, FREE AT LAST as we left for our first day back to school. We were grumbling about school again…she was giddy with joy. FREE AT LAST, FREE AT LAST still makes me smile. I carried it over with my own kids. The flag went up on the first day back…annually!!!🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸. Back to school is a good thing!