February at Chenevaux

There are a few signs of Spring appearing in the garden. Clumps of snowdrops, crocus, hazel catkins and these beautiful hellebores.  The daphne ( which has recovered from last winter's freeze ) is nearly in flower and the blue tits have started to investigate the nesting boxes in the roof of the bird table.   After all of the rain this winter the ground is absolutely sodden and it looks as though it will be a few weeks before it is dry enough to do anything much apart from some pruning and tidying up on any sunny days that come along - which will be very welcome.  We are starting to think about the potager, which was rather less productive last year as the weather was so dry and then the rabbits ate everything except the courgettes and the tomatoes.  At the moment a bit of dry would be a bonus but that still leaves the rabbits so we are going to invest in some chicken wire or similar fencing around about half of the veggie area to keep the pesky things out.  Another job to add to the list!  

A few of the jars of marmalade

A couple of weeks ago we went to Chauvigny market for our annual supply of marmalade oranges.  It was the coldest, wettest and most miserable day of the winter so far and many of the stallholders hadn't turned up.  After clearing out one trader we found another one and took half of his stock too.  Seville oranges are almost impossible to get here, so we get a variety called Amere, which are thinner skinned, but still make marvellous marmalade.  7 kilos of oranges, 8 grapefruit, a bag of lemons, 20 kilos of sugar, hours of chopping and boiling later we have a marmalade mountain.  86 jars to be precise, and not a single empty jar left anywhere. Luckily I have a network of people who kindly keep jars for me and donate them via my parents so when it comes to the next round of jam making supplies should be replenished.

Mark has been working hard in his studio, potting, firing, glazing and painting.  He has several exhibitions lined up this year, at Whittlesford in March, then here at Chenevaux for a national open studios week-end in April, a one day event in St Savin in June and then a solo exhibition at Angles sur l'Anglin for the last week in  August.  You can find out about these at www.markjudsonart.blogspot.com  His weekly painting and pottery workshops have been very well attended as well and everybody has a great time chatting as well as creating.

Some of the pottery ladies and Mark

Christmas Greetings

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Autumn at Chenevaux

Nature has been working its magic and providing us with its own intricate seasonal decorations.  One morning we went outside to find all of the trees and shrubs wrapped in fine silvery thread decorated with shiny dew drops.  With an autumn mist hiding us from outside view it was like a stage set out of a magical dreamworld.  The colours in the trees have been lovely this year too with lots of acid yellow brightening up the ever shorter days.

 Never mind, in just 3 weeks we will be over the worst and heading back to summer again.  The buds are already forming on the trees and where we had to cut the roses right down along the back of the Farmhouse to render the wall ( a job we had put off from last year knowing it would be nasty, and messy, which proved to be the case as the weather was awful so it dragged on over about 4 weeks for 8 days of actual work ) there are small shoots breaking out of the stems.  The wall looks great now too, and by next spring the grass will have sorted itself out again with a little tlc.

Chipping the old render off - Mark up a ladder again!

6 tonnes of sand in the garden

First covering of new lime render being applied - my poor garden!

Speaking of roses, our order from David Austin arrived a couple of days ago.  This consisted of 3 William Morris climbers, 3 Grace and 3 Benjamin Britten shrubs, to be followed soon by a climber called Crepuscule, which hopefully will be more attractive than the name suggests.  When I sent off the order Mark suggested that we had enough roses "maybe about 30" but on a quick count it must be more like 60 now, there's always space for more.  They love the clay soil here and tolerate the hot summers and cold winters.  After all the rain we have had in the last couple of months they should get off to a good start.

A few weeks ago a friend gave us a small carrier bag full of ceps, or porcini, which grow wild around here.  To dry them we removed the gills and then left them on a rack over the log burner for about 3 days until they were completely shrivelled.  The bag full is now an envelope full and I am looking forward to using them in a hearty winter meal before too long.  The added bonus is that every time I open the kitchen cupboard a glorious waft of earthy sweetness meets my nostrils!  The shelves are also full to bursting with jams and chutneys as we had a bumper crop of figs at the end of the summer.  Just as well as the apples were a disaster and the late plums were non-existent.  We did however have our first, small, crop of Bramleys, which went very well with some blackberries in a crumble.  Add to all of this the Christmas cake and pudding ( thanks to my Mother ), sausages, cheddar cheese and other goodies we brought back from a recent visit to Guernsey and we are well stocked up for the winter.
Christmas is coming - the supermarkets are stuffed with more chocolate than you could ever imagine and in the next few days Santa will be seen climbing up virtually every chimney stack in the village.  Wonder what he will bring us this year!

September at Chenevaux

September sunset

Looking from our front door out over the field opposite a few days ago - a stunning sunset.

After a very busy summer with both the gite and the farmhouse full for the whole of the holiday period and the gite still occupied until the end of September we are now catching up on gardening and other jobs that it has simply been to hot and dry to even contemplate.  The grass is looking really parched and everything needs a lot of water, despite the downpour a couple of days ago.  A few weeks ago our tractor mower gave up after 7 years of hard labour so after some investigation and discussion we decided to buy a new one but all it has had to do so far is cut the tops off the weeds!

Mark and his Machine

Since we have been here we have been trying to find a ( not too expensive ) way of getting our well up and running.  The motor works but the pump is too old to be repaired and as the water is just over 50m down it needs something with a bit of oomph.  Anyway a couple of weeks ago we were invited to coffee with some friends, who had some friends of theirs staying with them from Fiji, where they keep bees and produce honey - anyway it turns out that the husband is also a geologist and finds water sources there.  So the conversation turned to wells and later the same day they came over to have a look at ours.  He was most impressed!  and has given us some advice on what we need to buy. We have looked on line and think we may have found something suitable - so if all goes well ( ha ha ) before too long we may have lots of water for the garden.  What a luxury!

The village band drumming up business

Having decided to do the village brocante we had a really good clear out.  Its one thing having plenty of storage space in all of our barns etc but the problem is that we put stuff away and forget about it and before too long they're full of all sorts of things that we know we will never use again.  Mark actually took a car load of rubbish to the recycling centre and then two carloads down to the village for our stall.  Aiming to get rid of it rather than make a fortune nearly everything was priced at a couple of euros and still people wanted to haggle!  Great fun if hard work. Now we can now go along to the last few brocantes of the summer with a clear conscience, though we are much more selective about the things we buy these days!

Jam and crash helmets at the St Savin brocante early September

I'm not quite sure if this person is prone to hitting their head whilst making jam and is therefore on a health and safety mission to get us to wear crash helmets in the kitchen?  

Time for an apero on the square after brocanting

After a hard morning looking at other peoples' wares the only thing to do is to have a sit down and enjoy an aperitif , the blue sky and the September sun before heading home for lunch!

August at Chenevaux

One of Mark's paintings for the exhibition

Mark is spending all of his time in the studio finishing off paintings for his exhibition that starts on Saturday (11th August, more details at www.markjudsonart.blogspot.com ) at the little chapel in our village.   He emerges for meals and then retreats again.  Mind you he has got a TV in there and every time I go in there's either the Olympics on or cricket!  We can't believe how well Team GB are doing, and as for Andy Murray winning a gold medal in the tennis singles, wow!  Let's hope he can come back to Wimbledon next year and win that too.

White peach

Despite the late frost in April we have a few peaches on the tree at the front of the house and they are just about ripe.  We have been picking them for the past couple of days - lovely and juicy and very tasty.  These are the white ones whereas the ones in the back garden are yellow ( the flesh that is ) and although they are nice these are better.   The figs are growing as well and in a month or so we should have a bumper crop.  More jam and chutney making on the horizon!  The second variety of plums are just about ripe too though these are eaters rather than jammers!

Sunflowers as far as you can see

The sunflower field opposite the house has been awash with colour for weeks now, though the heads are starting to droop as the seeds develop.  They won't be harvested until the plants have gone black, at which point they look rather dismal.  After harvest there will be lots of flower heads left on the field so we go and collect up a load to feed the birds with over the winter.  Mind you we don't want to think about winter yet!

Next Wednesday 15th is the annual brocante at our village - St Pierre de Maille, and we are having a stall this year.  Its usually really busy and will be great fun, if exhausting!  I must restrain myself from buying books as at the last count we had 165 on the shelves in the house waiting to be read - perhaps we can get rid of some of the other 100 or so in the gite, or start a library!

Summer - blue skies and sunflowers

The beginning of July and everything is looking lovely under the gorgeous blue summer sky. The sunflower field opposite the house is just starting to show pools of yellow in amongst the green leaves and in a few days will be a vast expanse of colour as far as the eye can see. 

Sunflowers just starting to appear

The hollyhocks spring up where they choose, normally in the gravel paths and up against the walls.  This year the range of colours is fab - everything from pale yellow to a really dark mauve - and the bees are having a great time!

Outside the back door

Shades of pink.

A very deep pink, with a very dusty bee inside!

We planted 3 Alexander roses in January in the back garden of the Farmhouse and the scarlet flowers are fantastic in the sun, they seem to give the other more muted colours a lift.  They're in part of the veg patch because last year we had so many rabbits all of our greens got eaten before we had a look in.  The same thing is happening this year and most mornings we see two baby rabbits and two larger ones hopping around in bunny paradise - so next year we are going to fence off a smaller area for greens and hope that does the trick.  The toms ( you can see the canes in the pic below ) are doing well though and we should be picking them in the next few days.

Alexander roses in the Farmhouse garden

A couple of weeks ago we were down to our last pot of jam and were in danger of having to buy some.  Luckily the raspberries, redcurrants, black currants and cherries ripened just in time and stocks have been replenished.  The mirabelle plums are just about ripe too and we've already been collecting windfalls - so more jam making is imminent.  The plums are quite small, juicy and very sweet - lovely!  By the end of the summer our store cupboard will be full of jams which we serve to guests at breakfast and sometimes they take a couple of jars home.  It always gets used up by the following summer even though I seem to make more each year!

Mirabelle plums outside the studio

In between lawn mowing, pool cleaning and other essential summer jobs Mark is busy in the studio preparing for an exhibition at the little Chapelle in the village of St Pierre de Maille.  It is taking place from 11th August for 7 days and he will be opening from 2-6 every day.  More to follow on this!




  

Party time at Chenevaux!

Lunch at Josette's

The Caribbean Beach Bar

Birthdays, yaay, party time!  What shall we do to celebrate?  The vote ( and as it was Mark's birthday he had the deciding vote ) was for lunch at Josette's - actually called the Cafe de la Place, but known locally by the owner's name.  She's quite a character but most importantly cooks the most divine entrecote and chips!  The cafe is at Angles sur l'Anglin, which is a beautiful, quaint, village a couple of miles from us.  You could probably call Josette the Cafe Queen.  Every day at lunchtime and during the busy seasons she is found standing in the doorway of her cafe.  At the first sign of any hungry or thirsty punters she ushers you to the green tables and chairs - her side of the square ( actually its a triangle but you know what I mean ) so that she gets the lions share of the business.  The red chairs and tables belong to another cafe and they don't seem to have come up with a successful counter plan yet!  Anyway the main thing is her food is great.  So, lunch duly consumed we went home for siesta.  

The Guinness apron was a birthday present too!

                                                                              Mark must have known that more plans were afoot as he was told that he could spend as long as he wanted to sleeping off his lunch!  I think the birthday shirt may have given the game away rather as well, especially as Mr Bong was wearing a similar one all day.  Anyway he disappeared for hours ( expect there was some cricket on the TV ).  In the meantime Mr & Mrs Bong vanished into our cafe, aka the old bakery with scrubbing brushes, sticky tape, glasses etc until it was time for the grand opening of the Caribbean Beach Bar! Rum and Bob Marley music, we were transported back to the cricket tour in Barbados!  

Our new friend P A Rot

We invited the gite guests round for a couple of drinks too and there was a real party atmosphere!  Later we had yummy Caribbean food (Mr Bong had brought his Levi Roots cookery book which Mark had also spotted !) followed by red and green jelly, made by Mrs Bong, topped with crushed pineapple as we didn't have any yellow. My nearly only contribution to the festivities was the cake, which was actually made by my Mother but as my cake making is not the best and hers is,  this was a very good thing.  I also found some candles that are a bit like sparklers, and a cake frill. This nearly turned out to be a disaster as while we were talking the candles burnt down and the cake frill caught fire!  Luckily Mark managed to blow it and the candles out with an almighty puff!! Now I think about it did we actually remember to sing happy birthday?