HAVING A GLUTFUL (2)

Cripes! It’s even worse than I said! I’d completely forgotten about the massive pumpkins which are girding themselves to strike. One – about the size of a small coronation coach, around which are circling four apprehensive-looking white mice – has already gained entry to the kitchen as Ruth said it had split and probably wasn’t going to grow any bigger so she would bring it in and decide what to do with it. That was over a week ago and it’s still there on the bench, occupying a Geoff Capes space and as yet Ruth hasn’t dared to take a knife to it. The really worrying thing is that there are another 4 or 5 pumpkins outside gaining strength and volume waiting to join it and one of them is already bigger than the one indoors.

And I had a shock when I went into the garden this morning. I knew that there was a Second Planting of tomatoes about to break from the plants which Ruth had put into the ground to produce a late-season crop. What I hadn’t realised was that the first lot were still producing flowers and fruit and were about to unleash a second deluge of tomatoes, equal to the first. A ruthless (n.p.i.)* tomatophobe might have been tempted to sabotage their plans. But it wouldn’t be me. They’re taller than I am.

*n.p.i. = no pun intended

HAVING A GLUTFUL

I've previously animadverted on the tsunamis of foodstuffs washing over us from the garden. A momentous event occurred today. Ruth picked NO TOMATOES!! We ate NO TOMATOES!! And we SHAN'T be having ANY TOMATOES with our cooked breakfasts this weekend.

We have a new dilemma, though. One of our trees (a fig tree, as it happens) is producing HUNDREDS of FIGS (Capitals Are Habit-Forming, ArEn'T tHeY? I've been to lots of them.) None of our welter of recipe books tells us what to do with a surfeit of figs. Ruth has made fig jam, and it's delicious, but we have so many and it's taking a significant amount of each day to pick them. Does anyone have any recipes, preservation methods, etc.? A recipe for fig wine or fig distillate would be much appreciated by me.

The Invasion of The Tomatoes is not yet repulsed (or would that just be appropriate for peas?). The Second Planting is about to ripen.

GREY WATER ECOLOGY AND GARDENS

Well I have tried my hand at grey water saving in the past.

This place might offer another and better opportunity to be ecologically pure and righteous.

Well -

And I don't mean the dry well!

Soon after purchase we found that in spite of having an out-of-date fosse (sceptic tank) our sink water goes out of the kitchen and into the 'fossé' or roadside ditch (note change of spelling).

Here is a photo showing the fossé neatly trimmed and cleared by John and full of washing up and laundry water.

Sadly it doesn't go through a reed bed to my thirsty vegetables!

As we use ecofriendly products to wash and launder we don't feel too bad about this arrangement and may live with it till we die!

Anyway everyone in the village has the same system even the Mairie!

ART OVER AND OVER AGAIN

Well - here it lies - rolled up and stashed or stacked away in the grenier and no new work happening and at a standstill on the ideas from our round Europe trip.

Am I depressed about it?

Probably.

Right now I am far too busy to do more that think about it.

There is also no studio as yet!

John went to a chorale choir evening last night with lots of ladies and some men and it sounds interesting enough to carry on with.

I am thinking of starting an art blog related to this blog but different!!

If I can think of a good name to tie it to.

Who will look at it?

Who knows.

Perhaps I should give it all up.

LE VIN, LES CONSERVES ET LES ANGLAIS

We all know we are different and we all hope to be unique and yet we all do the same things.

Here we are in France busy growing grapes, conserving our garden produce, 'a la retraite' like a large proportion of the British we met and yet we all like to think that we are the 'pathfinders', the special people doing it for the first time - finding our own way . . .

So though we have so much in common - sometimes we are not too friendly to each other. I guess I have seen these hierarchies and cliques in other expat communities - I guess we have them in our towns and villages back in the UK.

We need the friendship and help of other British people.

Most days for retired folk do not give them easy and constant contact with working French people!

Any how John's grapes are tasty and my shelf of conserves - mostly from overgrown courgettes is increasing! Hopefully they will help to conserve us over the winter.

We are still rather lonely here - missing friends and missing family - and hoping that our circle of acquaintances and friends - French and English-speaking- will grow and enrich us.

CATS HOME - CAT AND PASSPORT

Here are the cat and I checking her newly arrived passport, the Carte d'Indentification issued by the Societe d'Identification Electronique Veterinaire. As you can see, in the bottom right-hand corner it carries her photograph, not wearing a hat or sunglasses. The form that came with it has a tear-off portion so that modifications can be notified to the authorities. One of the boxes is for a change of name of the cat. The space for inserting the name (that's the "usual" name, not a pedigree) is 33 characters long! Imagine calling that out every night!

Is a name change likely? Probably not as we are intending to have her spayed and she will therefore keep her maiden name.

DEJA VU

This is where I started from as a child of nine.

My father sold his farmhouse to pay off the mortgage on the farm and built a new home in the middle of a mealie field - all red dirt and dry stalks and no trees for acres around. He scratched out a plan of the house on the earth and built the house from bricks made from termite hills. My mother scribbled out a plan of a garden on a foolscap page . . .

So here John and I are in the middle of mealie farms in France but we do have trees around us.

In front of the house is a fig with ripening fruit.

To the east is a neglected overgrown hedgerow with brambles, may, blackthorn, ash, and dog roses, sloes and a walnut. The nuts - hazels and walnuts are all worm eaten. We gathered a few sloes too late and hope to do better from the fig tree. The blackberries are all too high up to reach. The is also a huge and prolific pear but no possibility of getting any of the fruit.

Thank goodness! It is a huge amount of work preserving it and impossible to eat it all or give it away!