Wednesday 16 February 2011

A country life

The weeks progress and spring seems almost here. We have learnt to ignore the weather forecast since it is almost always wrong. It is supposed to rain at some point, and we have had a few light showers, but not the day-long rain that was predicted. Most days we have not needed more than a light fleece or jumper over a t shirt and at lunch time on the terrace it is possible to sit out in shirt sleeves.


I survived two days in Bordeaux last week and now have a bit of a break until March. For the first time I was not exhausted by 8.00 pm and so walked around the city in the evening. I was surprised at how lively it was; and as the temperature was mild, the restaurants’ outside tables were full. I asked the students if this was usual for February in Bordeaux and they assured me it was!

On my return to the house however, I got back to basics. Herman had ploughed up the square that has been identified as my vegetable patch (note that things to do with cooking and growing food are mine and things to do with diggers and machines are Ian’s). I am more familiar with a little hand digging in the back garden and a quick half hour with the rake whereas this is digging on a more serious scale!



Well, the digging was easy enough but then the job was to spread the pile of sh*t that the farmer kindly donated! This was hard work and took me two days with a wheelbarrow and pitch fork!

The wildlife is begging to re-surface after winter. We have three young deer that run across the field in the morning and various birds that appear. One of them looked bigger than average and when I looked closer we could see it was a heron; obviously trying to supplement his normal fish diet with a few field mice! Then, on Monday (Valentine ’s Day) we woke to see this just outside the bedroom window. He looked like a baby buzzard (although I am not sure what a fully grown one would look like). He sat looking at the rain until the sound of the electric tea-maker finishing brewing scared him off.


There is a little bit of shaking at the start of the video while Ian bounced up and down on the bed !

1 comment:

Chairman Bill said...

Can we please see more photos of the digger?

Be more dog

I'm always grateful that we have our dogs. We had never been dog owners up until our move but it had been something that we both wanted ...