Day 65/10 : Déconfinement - Meals Garden Work

20 05 20 20. - that's the date!

Lettuce is not my favourite food but I have to admit that popping to the plot every day for just enough leaves for lunch is a pleasant experience to twist off the roots and wash and dry the leaves.
The flat leaved lettuce is called ROMAINE BALLON but me thinks it has to develop a heart.
Everyone needs a heart. The crinkly leaved one is Batavia.

Breakfast was two slices of holey chia bread with apricot jam and tea, Later was little coffee and one square chocolate.

Lunch was salad with lettuce, radish, cherry tomatoes, olive with almond, pickled garlic, unsalted pistachios, conference pear,  cheese, vinaigrette followed by cherry and yoghurt pancake. It was  delicious.

I was trying to keep warm this morning despite the sun coming round to the courtyard.

Two hours of active listening is hard work PLUS a very hard day sitting at the computer screen, translating English to French, editing out repeats, ensuring grammar is OK as i have a weird thing of dyslexia where phrases get muddled.   The letter is about my need for explanation of calculations from the Tax Office but because of various events in tbe last year ir broaches their errors. I want clarity as I am tired spending so much time every year in stress and anxiety about it.  I had a face to face meeting in February but the chap insisted a different contentious issue where I knew I was not wrong!  I need trust and confidence in these experts but in the last ten years i have too many examples of errors!

Gorgeous it was to spend time in the garden tying up tomato plants - giving tiny sweetpeas a cane each! -  planting out butternut squash seedlings, which I hope grow as they have become a bit stunted -  and  weeding.   The redstarts kept fluttering at me!

The evening meal was tuna cooked this morning as i have no fridge and it had thawed overnight. Served  on a bed of pasta sauce (from a jar), with sautéed steamed blette with sweet potato in its jacket baked yesterday and reheated-all cooked in one pan with lid.  Delicious.

It has been a glorious afternoon with temperatures  between 10 and 28C.  I was up and about earlier than normal - keen to fulfil my tasks.  Good night!

Day 64/9: Déconfinement - Meals, Company, Work

Tuesday 19 May 2020
Lunch was a rush of leftover mashed parsnip and sweet potato with a fried egg.
It skipped the photo shoot but actually was worthy.........
LOVE most of my meals and dining alone!!!!!!!
Eating what is in the house!
Fine evening meal dining was faux filet from the freezer with bio blette, shallots, fried whole garlic clove, sauteed cherry tomatoes and raw avocado half cos I ate the other half at 6 with a gin & tonic after my hard physical of almost four hours work.

As I stood in my kitchen with an empty white plate for photo shoot,

 I saw through my open kitchen door all that I love.  well .... not quite all...........

Such an amazingly warm day giving cherry coloured cheeks... must get Vitamin D...

BUT ... those cherries bought reduced on Sunday were cooked gently in sugar last night including their stones as they were due to rot....

 I did think of converting them to a clafoutis, but, they will be for brekkers tomorrow.

This morning's breakfast was the other half of yesterday cooked frozen myrtilles which had been soaking with yoghurt, oats, hemp and linseed overnight!!!!!

Then with morning coffee the second brioche ladled with butter and apricot jam!!!! mmmmmmmmm and then the one square of chocolate.

Today the gardener and I spent two hours, him with chainsaw, cutting dry old tree sticks of various thicknesses and other old wood  for the woodburner including two old parasols but one I saved AGAIN. It is 17 years old .... I  rescued it for the back garden as I still had the old cover which is rather worse for wear and last summer was a grass blanket! 

It needs some inventiveness to make it stay on and is very faded but I dont wish to use my new parasols just for me as I dont wish to risk the wind blowing them adrift. 

I have also saved the pole of the other parasol  and not for pole dancing! 

The rest of the wood was cut, bagged and boxed. The chicken coop shed was swept and several boxes and bags were stacked with the bags of old paper documents ready for the winter. 

Next week we continue with the rest of the free wood I acquired... 

The gardener is great and more than a handyman so I am lucky that he can work flexibly. 

I plan, prep & clearing as skivvy labour. 

I can physically work alongside him again and the muscles don't complain as much,  

I loved my bath to wash off the dust and dirt, to celebrate better fitness which is good for the mind and reason to live,  then with a G&T and BK streaming I had a wonderful evening  speaking to a friend and family

....

but there is that nightmare of a tax letter to finish in English and French... 

Hark ... the cuckoo! 

I am in love with France and yet I have not stepped out for two days! ; 

Dy 63/8: Déconfinement - Musk Rose

Monday 18 May 2020

Can't keep up with the amount of work I have to do AND  blog so got the dates muddled whilst enjoying fine food!
Trying to avoid talking; yet people want to talk and sometimes I wish to find out about them.
Mostly I want to get on, have to have small diversions but I am pleased that concentration span and workability is increasing if I stay in my own business.

Evening meal much the same as yesterday.

The Garden 

This is the best year ever for the Peter Beales PAUL's Himalayan Musk Rose that needs a Himalayan forest jungle  to grow wild in.   John the gardener and I curse it as we tame it every Spring/Autumn / Winter ... the scent is divine.  The small fantasy pink and white tiny fairy roses and buds are magic from heaven, covering an arched metal trellis.  I had no idea it would be so BIG........
You may have cuttings to pierce into the earth as deep as you can and I am sure it will root...
Mark you,  it is vicious if caught in the hair but by keeping it well trimmed its ok.  I started to train it over to the chicken coop.  Sadly it only flowers once in the year and sadly only lasts between one week and a month!  I love it!

Day 62/7: Déconfinement: First weekend - Infux of noise in the village!

Sunday 17 May 2020
Better sleep patterns have occurred though still variable.
Dashed to the shop for veg and fruit before midday closure after a mug of Earl Grey tea, 1/2 apricot croissant, tiny cup of coffee and one square of bitter chocolate.

The world was in the village on the first weekend of freedom from total lockdown. I am not the only one to express,  "Je regrette le déconfinement"

Oh my....  the artist is back from Paris, oysters were for sale,  tourists wandering about with serious walkiug sticks and no one keeping distance,  looking as if lockdown had not happened, several without masks buying picnic food from the shop as restaurants and bars are still closed.

The noise in the street was quite something all day with ancient vehicles in small convoys of up to 5 at a time... motorbikes the same !!!!!  Good atmosphere.  People walking past then turning back to the town when they think there is nothing else to see.  They miss important architecture on the outskirts of the village though agreed it doesn't look medieval.

Wondering how to plan the day, I knuckled down to finishing an important letter whilst working in 27C sunshine just inside my French doors. Started the next on a subject that has dogged my procrastination and comprehension for weeks.  My poor brain cells!  At last the end is nigh and it will be off my back until the Tax Payment Request is announced at the end of August.

ARTY FOODY amusement.

1. These are  purchases of the morning: 13.50 euros!

mmmm cherries, blette bio, brioche, bananas, pears, avocado, potatoes, courgette, tomatoes/ 

2.  This is the last quarter f pizza extracted from the freezer and prepped for  evening meal ....
and all the fresh foods i have left in store.. Bread, sweet potatoes,
5 lemons and two old limes, a few shallots, garlic cloves, ginger root,the last of the packet of  defrozen cooked myrtilles.

 'L'appareil pour preter' is smelly!

The borrowed fridge freezer is disgustingly smelly though clean inside! I refuse to use it for fear of contamination.

This works with the lid on for the yoghurts.

 Butter and Cheese are in the cheese safe.

3.This was finger food lunch... yum.. smelly expensive cheese, garden lettuce, radishes, shop tomatoes, mushrooms, almond olives with dessert cherries......

4.  This was evening meal.  No snacking during the day or evening. Ate healthy!
Had to finish the home made with supermarket pizza pastry anchovy topped with beetroot pizza......

4. This the first Oriental Poppy

Day 61/6 Déconfinement - Lettuce make Lunch

Saturday 16 May 2020

Food from the garden: radishes and the first lettuce.   I have to thin out both.

But back to lunch and evening meal..... Food glorious food.
The fridge/ freezer has gone for repair.   Fortunately, I didn't have much in it when DARTY took it on Wednesday. and left me a smelly but clean one that even when the doors were left open for 18 hrs one day and again the next day after cleaning with vinegar, is UNsuitable for storing food.  Smelly!

Deciding on what to eat for lunch I planned ahead to eat the last of the white naff bread rolls. Imagine a flower shaped loaf with 5 or 6 rolls attached to an inner one.  The shape was what attracted me!
I tried a different boulangerie last Saturday.   Their patisseries are to die for,  but their bread is naff.   I must eat the last one from the freezer even though the white flour isn't good for my digestive system.  Warmed for a few seconds in the microwave,  ladled with butter before adding beetroot to one half and half a tin of salmon pate from Lidl (small sized cans ideal for picnics) on the other half and folded together.  Eaten with a lettuce of about 7 leaves and radishes from the garden it was FINE FARE indeed with a cup of girly grey black tea.  Excellent lunch!

Then the daisy 'lawn' took 2.5 hrs to mow, walking back and forth, collecting cuttings. Normally these go onto the roses and lavender stretch,  BUT I must weed this 25 x 1.5 m bed to plant butternut and pumpkins in the gaps!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!   So it's piled onto plastic until I decide what to do with it!!!!!!

For the evening meal I planned ahead & took from the freezer the last half of chicken breast bought at the meat van about ten days ago.  Cost 2.50 euros perhalf of one breast.. but better value than the discounted ones i found at Super U where four small ones equated to this.

I mashed steamed in water white sweet potato and parsnip which was cooked yesterday and not eaten,  added butter, sage and thyme whilst reheating it, then added sautéed and steamed rescued parts of a large tomato which did not like being out of the fridge.  

A red pepper was sliced and cooked on the griddle pan. for the charred look / chicken garlic and shallot were cooked in the iron frying pan. 

Assemble.

Silly me made a mistake and opened one of my three Gratien & Meyer Saumur Champigny 2017 bottles that I bought from the chateau when I attended a seminar there!   VERY, VERY NICE!!!!!!!!

What can be finer in a continued sort of LOCKDOWN than dining out al fresco in my courtyard for lunch and evening meal in temperatures about 20C....

Fine dining indeed!!!!! That wall could do with a scrub! 

I am told Poitiers shops are open..... & evidently this village has tourists ... thank goodness they don't come up here as yet!
However, I noted this early afternoon that 6 motor bikes in one cavalcade passed by and 4 in another where one guy waved to me!  I lile to occasionally stand by my gate ...'cos that's what old ladies can do!
We shall soon be back to normal I guess with French residents from within 100km distance wondering where to go to ...  and deciding here would be rather nice. IT IS!!!!!!

Day 61/6: Déconfinement - Jerusalem Sage

16 May 2020

Jerusalem Sage / Phlomis fruticosa ( shrubby )  is a species of plant in the sage family Lamiaceae, native to Albania, Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Turkey, and countries of the former Yugoslavia.]

Here is a specimen in my village.  I've never seen it in flower before or taken much notice of where it is! 

It is an evergreen shrub, up to 1 m tall by 1.5 m  wide. Sage-like, aromatic leaves are oval, 2-4 inches long, larger than  the common edible sage. i have read it is edible, but I think the leaves are not as tasty as common sage.  They are long, wrinkled, grey-green with white undersides, and covered with fine hairs. 

The flowers are deep yellow and tubular growing in whorls of 20 in short spikes in early summer.

It is popular as an ornamental plant. It gained gained a Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit.   It has naturalised in parts of South West England..

It is listed as deer resistant, hard y and tolerant of a range of soil types.

Bees like it! 

Day 60/5: Déconfinement - La Malvoisine - La Source Post 4 of 4

This post is rewritten. Somehow I managed to delete the previous report.

Day 2: 12 May 2020
Discovery of the Source of the Malvoisine.

The Paysage de Bocage is located btween two chemins opposite the lower woodland which it discharges into..

The water level is already lower as  the geological phenomena of the Source is not when gushing towards the Chateau.

We deviated from one by going through a hedgerow, which looked as if an animal or human had also cut through and arrived at a watery place at the edge of wheat fields.

No not here.... down there.....

Tricky to place our feet on rocks that move.
Insecure to told onto hedge treelings which are dead in places.

There in a hollow, at the base of a one metre high man made stone wall, against the embankment of the wheat fields. was the source bubbling up in one small place compared with the shallows in front of it.

Turn around and see the direction of the course into La Bocage.

Mission achieved. Time to depart.
We clambered to the wheat field and eventually came to  the other chemin.
I have fulfilled one of my ten year aims since living in the beautiful village.
Monday 11 May will be attributed to La Malvoisine from now on!

Day 59/4: Déconfinement - La Malvoisine Post 3 of 4

The disappearance of La Malvoisine 

It's almost as if it hasn't existed, apart from a few flattened grasses, shifted stones, rocks and soil. The chemin through the woodland was relatively damp to walk along and almost dry by about 11 in the morning- not many puddles to avoid.
The garden near the chateau has to rebuild the small containment wall.

flattened grasses

The culvert opposite the bocage.

Day 58/3: Déconfinement - La Malvoisine Post 2 of 4

La Malvoisine in photos from La Bocage to Les Combes.

From the 'paysage du bocage'  the water exits the prairir under the road to woodland.

The stream emerges from the woodland at Les Combes

Then La Malvoisine disappears underground, under the road of the Centre d'Interpretation de le Roc aux Sorciers, before re-appearing in a channel in the garden of a house, progressing on its descent to the River.