Wednesday, April 19, 2006
Sunday 16 April 2006 (Easter Sunday)
We drove back here to La Neuve-Lyre last Monday afternoon; very eager to see what had been happening in the garden during the ten days or so we had been away. No blossom on either the cherry tree or the apple tree yet, but the mystery shrub with furry buds is now full of white flowers, rather like a magnolia, and there is a wonderful round yellow forsythia bush. The main development was the grass, which had grown very long and lush, and N gave it its first cut with the new lawnmower on Tuesday and Wednesday, which made a tremendous difference to the look of the whole garden. All the daffodils are now out; some narcissi still in bud, and more primulas in various pale colours, and lots of wild violets, including dark pink ones and a patch of white ones in the corner of the front garden. There are several pink flowers on the camellia, and fat buds on the rhododendrons and hydrangeas.
What we expected to happen as soon as we arrived at la Neuve-Lyre was a phone call from Monsieur A telling us that the new heater was ready for installation, but so far we have heard nothing and have decided to leave it until after the Easter weekend before phoning him.
As always, there seems so much to do when we get here that it is difficult to know where to start, and while N was in the garden in beautiful spring sunshine on Tuesday and Wednesday I caught up with the cleaning and finished organising the kitchen. I also went out for the first time as far as the Post Office (to post family Easter cards) without my coat! As I had left last time as soon as the artisan had finished, there was hoovering to do where he had been working by the garden door and the back stairs, and after all the drilling in the kitchen a fine dust everywhere, so after hoovering I washed the floors in the kitchen dining room and salon. The kitchen is now quite finished apart from the curtains - the spice and herb jars are all filled and labelled and on their shelves, the towel rack up and in use, the kitchen roll holder in position, the olive oil dispenser filled and ready, and a wooden shelf we bought on Tuesday has had two coats of varnish and is now on the wall under the cupboards holding the storage jars I optimistically bought back in November at IKEA.
And I am so enjoying using this kitchen! Cooking and preparing meals in a civilised way as opposed to picnicking in the dining room or opening things quickly out of packets. So far I have baked cookies, made soup and cooked local asparagus, and today we have had roast lamb with roast potatoes, rosemary and mint from the garden and home-made individual treacle sponge puddings for lunch.
But I digress. On Tuesday morning we went into Bernay as N wanted to go to the France Telecom shop because he was still unable to access his e-mail messages here. They weren’t a lot of help, and merely suggested we phone the service help line, so after a lot of wasted time N reloaded the disc. Anyway, this gave us another opportunity to visit the garden centre at Bernay, where N bought vast quantities of canes for beans and tomatoes, which kept falling all over the place, more artichokes and tomato plants, and I got some very inexpensive little cream pansies (1 euro for 6) for the front window boxes. He asked after the black cat, and they pointed her out, lying in the sun on the top of a huge pile of sacks of barbecue fuel, only the ends of her black paws visible. We also went to the supermarket where we bought the afore-mentioned lamb and some fish to eat on Good Friday with home-made parsley sauce (parsley also from the garden) We were recommended an unheard-of African fish called Panga; white and firm and boneless or so it seemed, anyway very good. At Monsieur Bricolage we got the shelf for the kitchen; nicely shaped and with wooden brackets, all in a kit.
In the afternoon it was very warm, and I enjoyed planting my pansies in pots to go in white wrought-iron troughs I had brought from Ainsworth Street (originally bought in Saint-Denis.) They look very good on the windowsills of the salon and study, visible from the road. I had over-calculated and had a lot left over, which I planted in two concrete urns, also from Ainsworth Street, outside the wine cellar. What I really enjoyed was being able to do this straight away in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon and not have to wait - as in other years - until after work or the weekend when I had a spare moment, by which time it was usually raining. N spent nearly all day in the garden and has now almost finished digging the entire vegetable plot, and has planted several rows already, and from time to time consults his seed collection, neatly filed in a box on the table in the verandah. The grass cuttings more than filled the compost bin, but the level is now going down.
Monday 17 April 2006
By Saturday the weather had reverted to winter again, and we had quite the strongest winds we have had since we’ve been here. The badly fixed window in the salon (waiting for Monsieur P the carpenter) kept blowing open, and we later discovered that the heavy iron weight propping back the bedroom shutter had blown across the balcony. The pine trees higher than the house leaned over dangerously. In the afternoon we lit the fire, as the principal event of Saturday was that at long last Marie-Antoinette came to tea! After weeks of not seeing her at all, or only from a distance or in a shop, we finally ran into each other on the pavement outside the antique shop, and I was able to invite her, and pleased because she said she was spending Easter on her own. I said there were lots of things we needed to ask her, and she replied that as she had been living in her house since 1967 she should know most things about the village. I spent a long time reflecting on this afterwards; I have lived in so many places doing so many different things since 1967 that it was difficult to imagine being in the same place all that time. I later discovered that she is four years older than me. She said she often went walking or cycling with a group of women in the village, and yes, she would take me along too.
I showed her round the house - and we both showed her the garden - which she had last visited about 25 years ago, and she told us various things about the previous occupants, and how the house and garden used to be. She said she had seen me sewing; the machine is in the window which looks out on to the road. I explained about all the curtains, and she said more than once what a lot of work we had to do here; we kept insisting we quite enjoyed it. N asked how we got rid of large items of rubbish (there are lots of pieces of old iron in the hay loft) but it turns out we have to drive them to Rugles. Not easy. We asked about good restaurants too, but are not sure now we can remember all the answers. N was surprised that she didn’t think much of the present traiteur; apparently the former one was much better.
On Sunday it was cloudy but dry and we spent a lot of the time preparing, eating and recovering from our Easter lunch, but in the afternoon went to an antiques fair at La Ferrière-sur-Risle. I had seen several posters for these fairs - about one per month - since we have been here, and lots of other references to La Ferrière-sur-Risle, which is not on the bus route, and now we have finally visited it. (The Risle is the river which runs through La Neuve-Lyre; La Ferrière-sur-Risle is about 9 kilometres from here) The fair was under « Les Halles » an ancient beamed roof with open sides in the middle of the very pretty village. There was a lot to look at, mostly expensive but very interesting, and I managed to buy three items from the « everything for 0.50 euro » stall. The rest of the day we spent reading in the salon and having supper. N finally finished reading « Lark Rise to Candleford » which I had given him for Christmas after he had completed his family history and wondered what sort of lives his village ancestors lived. I have finished reading Benjamin Constant and am now reading « Carmen » , the original story by Prosper Merimée. After supper we watched an excellent programme on Arte (the German/French channel) about Michelangelo, which I had previously seen in Britain. Once you got used to the idea of Michelangelo speaking German (no stranger than English, really) it was very good, and full of views of places we had visited in Florence and Rome.
I also found a new telephone directory had been delivered, and I am in it! As N says, this is the first time I have been in a foreign phone directory; put like that it sounds like an achievement. The directory is for the department of Eure (department number 27) and divided alphabetically into towns and villages, with pages and pages for somewhere like Evreux, but barely a third of a page for La Neuve-Lyre. With all the names and addresses set out, it’s easy to see who one’s neighbours are.
This morning I left a phone message for Monsieur A - obviously taking Easter Monday off - and went to the local market. It was larger and busier than I had ever seen before; not sure if this was because of Easter, or if it gets busier as the season progresses - there were certainly far fewer stalls in January. N had asked me to look out for lettuce plants, of which there were several varieties, so I took some back and suggested he come and have a look at the stall selling all sorts of bedding plants, herbs and vegetables. He came along and bought some reddish-coloured lettuce plants, and little cauliflower and cabbage plants. (When I saw the cabbage plants had a desire to begin singing « Savez-vous planter les choux? ») There was also a large haberdashery, wool, embroidery, buttons and beads stall - I looked for rufflette tape, which was the only thing in that line I currently require, but there wasn‘t any. Wonder if it will be there every week? I saw a jewellery stall which wasn’t there before, and one selling slightly more fashionable jumpers than the usual basic one. I bought a lot of good fruit & veg. (including asparagus) from a stall I hadn‘t seen before. Another first - I heard people speaking English in the little supermarket. Decided on consideration not to speak to them.
N planted his lettuces very decoratively in alternating colours along the edge of the rose garden, beside the paved path outside the dining room and the grande pièce. They look very good now but, as he says, once we eat them it will spoil the pattern. The cabbages and cauliflowers have all gone in rows in the vegetable plot; almost all dug over now, and filling up with rows of plants and seedlings. I cycled bottles and papers and the old phone directory to the recycling area down the back road, and - at Ns’ suggestion - cleaned all the blackened leaves of the camellia plant by the water butt. This took a long time, and I was quite sure I had better things to do, but suppose this is what being The Lady of The Camellias entails. I bet Dumas’ heroine didn’t have to clean hers with a bowl of washing-up water.
Wednesday 19 April 2006
The vegetable garden is now all dug, apart from a permanent bonfire area left at one end, and a « bean corner » ready with canes for them to climb. Four varieties of potatoes have been planted, and there is just a little space left now for other things to be come later on. N has gone back to Paris this afternoon for an appointment with the bank tomorrow, as ever since he received the cheque for the sale of the Italian apartment and safely deposited it in a branch of his own bank as soon as he was over the border, there has been no sign of it in his account. Given that both countries are in the Euro Zone, and the possibility of electronic transfer, this seems rather a long time - N says it would have been quicker if a man on a horse had ridden to Paris with the money in a bag. It has also been very difficult to get any information, or any reply at all, from his local bank, so the appointment is a good sign.
Monsieur A has just rung this afternoon, and the new heating installation (plus new electric water heater, and fixing of non-working radiator) will start on Monday. This will give us time to clear the boiler room and verandah on Sunday, and should be finished in time before our Family Visitors arrive on the following Saturday.
I have finished and hung the red kitchen curtains; having been alternatively pleased and not sure about them. We certainly need a longer pole,; hopefully N will call at Leroy Merlin on Friday on his way back and get one along with other things. I decided not to try and mitre the corners with the red border, but sewed the side strips first and then the tops and bottoms. What I am pleased with is the similarity of the two fabrics; I bought the plain red from memory, but the weight and weave is almost the same and the red a good match. I shall give myself a short break before starting on the next ones - pale blue for the guest bedroom. The first step has been to wash the four pale blue single sheets I am going to use; so far 3 out of 4 have been washed.
N said yesterday that we had visitors; they turned out to be swallows (or possibly swifts) which he thinks are nesting in what we thought were two abandoned nests on the rafters of the garage. The nests looked fairly permanent, and now look as though they might have been refurbished a bit. There are so many birds in this garden, and we both feel we could do with bird book (or two, one in French and one in English) to identify exactly what we see. We have also discovered a lot of what appear to be small black bees coming out of holes in the ground on the front lawn, and N has been attacking them with an anti-wasp spray. The other thing in the garden we are looking at a lot at the moment is the cherry tree - the blossom is coming very gradually. Weather is now alternately cloudy and sunny, but dry, and the grass will need cutting again soon.
Indoors however, things are not so good; problems with the loo « broyeur » which is flushing itself back up into the wash basin; not nice at all. We have sent an e-mail to the Artisan, as this too needs to be sorted before our Visitors arrive.
We drove back here to La Neuve-Lyre last Monday afternoon; very eager to see what had been happening in the garden during the ten days or so we had been away. No blossom on either the cherry tree or the apple tree yet, but the mystery shrub with furry buds is now full of white flowers, rather like a magnolia, and there is a wonderful round yellow forsythia bush. The main development was the grass, which had grown very long and lush, and N gave it its first cut with the new lawnmower on Tuesday and Wednesday, which made a tremendous difference to the look of the whole garden. All the daffodils are now out; some narcissi still in bud, and more primulas in various pale colours, and lots of wild violets, including dark pink ones and a patch of white ones in the corner of the front garden. There are several pink flowers on the camellia, and fat buds on the rhododendrons and hydrangeas.
What we expected to happen as soon as we arrived at la Neuve-Lyre was a phone call from Monsieur A telling us that the new heater was ready for installation, but so far we have heard nothing and have decided to leave it until after the Easter weekend before phoning him.
As always, there seems so much to do when we get here that it is difficult to know where to start, and while N was in the garden in beautiful spring sunshine on Tuesday and Wednesday I caught up with the cleaning and finished organising the kitchen. I also went out for the first time as far as the Post Office (to post family Easter cards) without my coat! As I had left last time as soon as the artisan had finished, there was hoovering to do where he had been working by the garden door and the back stairs, and after all the drilling in the kitchen a fine dust everywhere, so after hoovering I washed the floors in the kitchen dining room and salon. The kitchen is now quite finished apart from the curtains - the spice and herb jars are all filled and labelled and on their shelves, the towel rack up and in use, the kitchen roll holder in position, the olive oil dispenser filled and ready, and a wooden shelf we bought on Tuesday has had two coats of varnish and is now on the wall under the cupboards holding the storage jars I optimistically bought back in November at IKEA.
And I am so enjoying using this kitchen! Cooking and preparing meals in a civilised way as opposed to picnicking in the dining room or opening things quickly out of packets. So far I have baked cookies, made soup and cooked local asparagus, and today we have had roast lamb with roast potatoes, rosemary and mint from the garden and home-made individual treacle sponge puddings for lunch.
But I digress. On Tuesday morning we went into Bernay as N wanted to go to the France Telecom shop because he was still unable to access his e-mail messages here. They weren’t a lot of help, and merely suggested we phone the service help line, so after a lot of wasted time N reloaded the disc. Anyway, this gave us another opportunity to visit the garden centre at Bernay, where N bought vast quantities of canes for beans and tomatoes, which kept falling all over the place, more artichokes and tomato plants, and I got some very inexpensive little cream pansies (1 euro for 6) for the front window boxes. He asked after the black cat, and they pointed her out, lying in the sun on the top of a huge pile of sacks of barbecue fuel, only the ends of her black paws visible. We also went to the supermarket where we bought the afore-mentioned lamb and some fish to eat on Good Friday with home-made parsley sauce (parsley also from the garden) We were recommended an unheard-of African fish called Panga; white and firm and boneless or so it seemed, anyway very good. At Monsieur Bricolage we got the shelf for the kitchen; nicely shaped and with wooden brackets, all in a kit.
In the afternoon it was very warm, and I enjoyed planting my pansies in pots to go in white wrought-iron troughs I had brought from Ainsworth Street (originally bought in Saint-Denis.) They look very good on the windowsills of the salon and study, visible from the road. I had over-calculated and had a lot left over, which I planted in two concrete urns, also from Ainsworth Street, outside the wine cellar. What I really enjoyed was being able to do this straight away in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon and not have to wait - as in other years - until after work or the weekend when I had a spare moment, by which time it was usually raining. N spent nearly all day in the garden and has now almost finished digging the entire vegetable plot, and has planted several rows already, and from time to time consults his seed collection, neatly filed in a box on the table in the verandah. The grass cuttings more than filled the compost bin, but the level is now going down.
Monday 17 April 2006
By Saturday the weather had reverted to winter again, and we had quite the strongest winds we have had since we’ve been here. The badly fixed window in the salon (waiting for Monsieur P the carpenter) kept blowing open, and we later discovered that the heavy iron weight propping back the bedroom shutter had blown across the balcony. The pine trees higher than the house leaned over dangerously. In the afternoon we lit the fire, as the principal event of Saturday was that at long last Marie-Antoinette came to tea! After weeks of not seeing her at all, or only from a distance or in a shop, we finally ran into each other on the pavement outside the antique shop, and I was able to invite her, and pleased because she said she was spending Easter on her own. I said there were lots of things we needed to ask her, and she replied that as she had been living in her house since 1967 she should know most things about the village. I spent a long time reflecting on this afterwards; I have lived in so many places doing so many different things since 1967 that it was difficult to imagine being in the same place all that time. I later discovered that she is four years older than me. She said she often went walking or cycling with a group of women in the village, and yes, she would take me along too.
I showed her round the house - and we both showed her the garden - which she had last visited about 25 years ago, and she told us various things about the previous occupants, and how the house and garden used to be. She said she had seen me sewing; the machine is in the window which looks out on to the road. I explained about all the curtains, and she said more than once what a lot of work we had to do here; we kept insisting we quite enjoyed it. N asked how we got rid of large items of rubbish (there are lots of pieces of old iron in the hay loft) but it turns out we have to drive them to Rugles. Not easy. We asked about good restaurants too, but are not sure now we can remember all the answers. N was surprised that she didn’t think much of the present traiteur; apparently the former one was much better.
On Sunday it was cloudy but dry and we spent a lot of the time preparing, eating and recovering from our Easter lunch, but in the afternoon went to an antiques fair at La Ferrière-sur-Risle. I had seen several posters for these fairs - about one per month - since we have been here, and lots of other references to La Ferrière-sur-Risle, which is not on the bus route, and now we have finally visited it. (The Risle is the river which runs through La Neuve-Lyre; La Ferrière-sur-Risle is about 9 kilometres from here) The fair was under « Les Halles » an ancient beamed roof with open sides in the middle of the very pretty village. There was a lot to look at, mostly expensive but very interesting, and I managed to buy three items from the « everything for 0.50 euro » stall. The rest of the day we spent reading in the salon and having supper. N finally finished reading « Lark Rise to Candleford » which I had given him for Christmas after he had completed his family history and wondered what sort of lives his village ancestors lived. I have finished reading Benjamin Constant and am now reading « Carmen » , the original story by Prosper Merimée. After supper we watched an excellent programme on Arte (the German/French channel) about Michelangelo, which I had previously seen in Britain. Once you got used to the idea of Michelangelo speaking German (no stranger than English, really) it was very good, and full of views of places we had visited in Florence and Rome.
I also found a new telephone directory had been delivered, and I am in it! As N says, this is the first time I have been in a foreign phone directory; put like that it sounds like an achievement. The directory is for the department of Eure (department number 27) and divided alphabetically into towns and villages, with pages and pages for somewhere like Evreux, but barely a third of a page for La Neuve-Lyre. With all the names and addresses set out, it’s easy to see who one’s neighbours are.
This morning I left a phone message for Monsieur A - obviously taking Easter Monday off - and went to the local market. It was larger and busier than I had ever seen before; not sure if this was because of Easter, or if it gets busier as the season progresses - there were certainly far fewer stalls in January. N had asked me to look out for lettuce plants, of which there were several varieties, so I took some back and suggested he come and have a look at the stall selling all sorts of bedding plants, herbs and vegetables. He came along and bought some reddish-coloured lettuce plants, and little cauliflower and cabbage plants. (When I saw the cabbage plants had a desire to begin singing « Savez-vous planter les choux? ») There was also a large haberdashery, wool, embroidery, buttons and beads stall - I looked for rufflette tape, which was the only thing in that line I currently require, but there wasn‘t any. Wonder if it will be there every week? I saw a jewellery stall which wasn’t there before, and one selling slightly more fashionable jumpers than the usual basic one. I bought a lot of good fruit & veg. (including asparagus) from a stall I hadn‘t seen before. Another first - I heard people speaking English in the little supermarket. Decided on consideration not to speak to them.
N planted his lettuces very decoratively in alternating colours along the edge of the rose garden, beside the paved path outside the dining room and the grande pièce. They look very good now but, as he says, once we eat them it will spoil the pattern. The cabbages and cauliflowers have all gone in rows in the vegetable plot; almost all dug over now, and filling up with rows of plants and seedlings. I cycled bottles and papers and the old phone directory to the recycling area down the back road, and - at Ns’ suggestion - cleaned all the blackened leaves of the camellia plant by the water butt. This took a long time, and I was quite sure I had better things to do, but suppose this is what being The Lady of The Camellias entails. I bet Dumas’ heroine didn’t have to clean hers with a bowl of washing-up water.
Wednesday 19 April 2006
The vegetable garden is now all dug, apart from a permanent bonfire area left at one end, and a « bean corner » ready with canes for them to climb. Four varieties of potatoes have been planted, and there is just a little space left now for other things to be come later on. N has gone back to Paris this afternoon for an appointment with the bank tomorrow, as ever since he received the cheque for the sale of the Italian apartment and safely deposited it in a branch of his own bank as soon as he was over the border, there has been no sign of it in his account. Given that both countries are in the Euro Zone, and the possibility of electronic transfer, this seems rather a long time - N says it would have been quicker if a man on a horse had ridden to Paris with the money in a bag. It has also been very difficult to get any information, or any reply at all, from his local bank, so the appointment is a good sign.
Monsieur A has just rung this afternoon, and the new heating installation (plus new electric water heater, and fixing of non-working radiator) will start on Monday. This will give us time to clear the boiler room and verandah on Sunday, and should be finished in time before our Family Visitors arrive on the following Saturday.
I have finished and hung the red kitchen curtains; having been alternatively pleased and not sure about them. We certainly need a longer pole,; hopefully N will call at Leroy Merlin on Friday on his way back and get one along with other things. I decided not to try and mitre the corners with the red border, but sewed the side strips first and then the tops and bottoms. What I am pleased with is the similarity of the two fabrics; I bought the plain red from memory, but the weight and weave is almost the same and the red a good match. I shall give myself a short break before starting on the next ones - pale blue for the guest bedroom. The first step has been to wash the four pale blue single sheets I am going to use; so far 3 out of 4 have been washed.
N said yesterday that we had visitors; they turned out to be swallows (or possibly swifts) which he thinks are nesting in what we thought were two abandoned nests on the rafters of the garage. The nests looked fairly permanent, and now look as though they might have been refurbished a bit. There are so many birds in this garden, and we both feel we could do with bird book (or two, one in French and one in English) to identify exactly what we see. We have also discovered a lot of what appear to be small black bees coming out of holes in the ground on the front lawn, and N has been attacking them with an anti-wasp spray. The other thing in the garden we are looking at a lot at the moment is the cherry tree - the blossom is coming very gradually. Weather is now alternately cloudy and sunny, but dry, and the grass will need cutting again soon.
Indoors however, things are not so good; problems with the loo « broyeur » which is flushing itself back up into the wash basin; not nice at all. We have sent an e-mail to the Artisan, as this too needs to be sorted before our Visitors arrive.
# posted by Chez Katherine @ 8:28 AM 
