It is officially hot – which as far as I’m concerned is lovely, it is also not too humid so I’m quite happy at the moment. We have had blue skies now for over a week and it does make one feel so much better.
As I mentioned two weeks ago, I was painting my full length mirror – which previously belonged to my nana – here is the final product. I’m very happy with how it looks and I think my jarrah jewellery box (a gift from my sister many years ago) really looks good and stands out sitting on the base. So on to the next project – not sure what yet, but there will be something.
I also mentioned two weeks ago that my courgette and squash plants were doing well. And I’ve picked two squash so far and I’ve got courgettes on the way. So they are doing well. My tomatoes this year are not doing quite so well. I think next year I will buy plants rather than growing these from seed. At the moment I am having to water everything in the garden due to the lack of rain. But that isn’t a problem.
We have also finally bought an umbrella for our patio area, as in the morning and at lunch we haven’t really been able to sit outside due to the sun. It has been lovely to sit out for most of the day for our meals and look down our garden. Still a lot of work to happen with the garden but hopefully by the end of this year it will be at a stage that will mean a lot less work in the coming years.
Yesterday Pat and I went off for a day trip to Aubusson with his French group. It is an interesting mix of Brits, Dutch and an American. We were going to the new Tapestry museum. Pat and I had been to the old tapestry museum years ago on one of our holiday’s, and surprisingly really enjoyed it, which is why we were happy to go back to see the new one. It was well worth the trip, we had a guided tour which explained the history of tapestry in the area and was great. We will return. Afterwards we went to have lunch – we originally had had a choice on the courses but as our numbers grew it became a set meal. Which was ok – I enjoyed the main course, but I didn’t eat the starter of pork terrine (I tried it) and the dessert was a local speciality which was with lentils in a sweet chestnut syrup and served with a type of yogurt/cream. While it tasted lovely, because of my stomach I just can’t eat many lentils and after having garlic in my main I did have to skip the dessert.
After desert we headed off to a local chateau which also has some very old tapestries and discovered when we arrived that we had been due an hour earlier. Now since the French teacher organised this and she is French (though in her 80’s), we are not quite sure what happened but we joined the tour – we had only missed a small amount, it was interesting but the guide was speaking in French, very, very quickly, our wonderful bus driver spoke to the guide and asked him to slow down as a lot of us were English speakers. Thankfully not long after that we had the English language information sheets (and dutch language information sheets) in our hands. What I found interesting was how much I could follow of the French, partly because I had the context of what was being talked about, partly because I had the information in front of me in English, but mostly because of what I had learnt in the morning at the museum. I did enjoy the tour.
Tomorrow we’re off to a picnic which should be fun. This again is with one of the groups we belong to and we do know a good number of people that are going so this should be a fun day. Pat will tell you all about it in his blog next week.
So for now, à bientôt, from our wonderful part of France – Delia