Celebrity status for Franca

I am going to sound like a broken record soon, but another fantastic weekend weather wise, on Saturday I was in the garden with just a pair of shorts on with local thermometers (on shops etc..) showing temps in the shade of 21 degrees, and much hotter in the direct sunshine. There were lots of red faces at the airport on Sunday evening as we waited for the flight back to Stansted. We do have to bear in mind though on the climate change front that this is, in theory, very unusual for the time of year, or is it now… That was my last Sunday night flight back for a while, thank goodness, because I really miss Sunday evenings in France. If I have to fly back to the UK on a Sunday evening I only get a one and a half day weekend.

It may not be the Oscars but Franca has reached local celebrity status in the Charente as she got her photo in the regional paper telling the story of how we found our B&B, how the renovations were going and what our future plans are. By the time we went out on Saturday night the news had spread around the local villages so Franca was recognised by the owner of the restaurant we were eating in when we arrived. Don't worry, we will be keeping our feet firmly on the ground after all todays news is tomorrows chip paper as we say in the UK. Thanks to the power of the internet, and our mailing list, by the time you read this the news article will be all over Europe, and the publicity was much better than I thought it would be.

Fleur and I got our potage (vegetable garden) under way this weekend and I dug the first 3 feet by 10 feet bed, in which we planted peas, tomatoes carrots and some herb in a little herb garden we are making. It amazing, it looks so small having dug it, double digging mind, but all my muscles ache as if I had been doing something really strenuous, definitely out of condition, still I have a few more beds to dig so I should get used to it by the end. I am not sure how many beds I will end up with but we need a bed for the salad plants, some more veggies and franca suggested we have a fruit bed too, after all we have to grow our own charentaise melons. You notice though no offer to help dig the beds. I will probably wimp out and borrow a rotivator from our kind neighbour Jean-Luc, that will get the job done much quicker than with a fork, a spade and a rake. Fleur has been very helpful this weekend, she helped me clear out the garage, before moving on to start the veggie garden, in fact when I left on Sunday afternoon she fell asleep on the sofa. I think that’s the first time I have worn her out, but to be honest she probably wore herself out.