Monday, October 02, 2006
Thursday 28 September 2006
We have been back in Normandy six days now, and only yesterday did I feel I had got to grips with all the apples in the garden! So many had fallen while we were away, and on Saturday morning I picked them all up, and put the worst straight into the compost bin. The rest I laid out on the garden table, where they filled an area of about a square metre. Several afternoons this week I have sat the table peeling and cutting them in the pale autumn sunshine, thinking this is what having a Normandy house and garden is all about. I have frozen several lots in chunks, some as compôte, and am on the second batch of apple jelly.
Friday 29 September 2006
Second batch of apple jelly a great success; darker and more flavour than the first, perhaps the apples were riper? I must now turn my attention to marrow and ginger jam, (and then Christmas puddings) while trying to keep abreast of the windfall apples day by day; apple dessert cake for this evening.
When we got back here last Friday we were keen to catch up with the post, which contained several birthday cards for N. He was also expecting a parcel from his daughter Kathryn, and I hoped there would be some news of the present I had ordered for him from the UK by various secret e-mails, which I had been tracking while in Paris. There was a delivery slip left by the postman, so we went straight to the post office, but it was only a very small package containing my Filofax diary pages for 2007, ordered by Internet! I was worried about the present, which should have arrived by then, but in the evening before I had time to e-mail an enquiry, our neighbour Annick (next door to Marie-Antoinette) rang the bell and said she had taken in a parcel for me, to save it having to be sent back. I was delighted, and so was she when I said it was N’s birthday present.
He fortunately was delighted too; it was a beautifully-crafted Georgian wooden music stand, easy to put together and very elegant, and he claimed he had always wanted one. It stood in the grande pièce being admired for a few days, but has now gone up to his attic study, where by happy coincidence it matches the beams.
The parcel from Kathryn arrived safely on Saturday morning; it was beautiful album of photos from the family visit/musical house party last month; lovely pictures and beautifully put together, we sat and looked at it for about half an hour. I was particularly pleased to see photos of the picnic, as I hadn’t taken any and it had been such a lovely sunny day.
I thought Annick might be interested to see what was in the parcel, so I invited her in for tea on Saturday afternoon. As I thought, she was interested to see the house; some years ago when she was first widowed and her son was small she had done some cleaning here. She told me she had been widowed twice and that you never knew what life was going to throw up; I agreed and said that although N and I had known each other for 10 years we had only been living together for a year; she said « You’re a young couple! »
We talked a lot about what do with apples; she said her second husband had several apple trees, and as he was a hunter she made apple sauce to e at with game. I said I really needed to find some blackberries, and she said there had been some round the corner on the road to Conches, but that they were mostly over. We looked at the vegetable garden; she said she always thought a vegetable garden kept a man occupied, which amused me greatly, and like Marie-Antoinette she knew a lot about growing vegetables but was surprised that I knew how to make curtains. She admired those in the grande pièce; I said they’d had to be very inexpensive from IKEA as there were eight of them.
N didn’t join in this tea party as he was busy in the outhouse painting shutters, taking up where he had left off before going to Switzerland. There are 10 shutters in this first (ground floor) batch, each requiring one undercoat and two top coats, each side. The deadline is next Monday, when Monsieur P and his band are coming to hang them. On Tuesday morning he took time off from the shutters - and I from peeling apples - and we went to L’Aigle market on the bus. N said what were we going to do for all that time? but found that there was so much to see that the time went very quickly. There were not so many plant stalls as usual, but we bought a roast chicken because it smelt so good, and a « real » Camembert, some ginger (for the marrow jam) and amazingly, some strawberries from the same stall as in July. N bought a teach yourself Spanish course, of which more later.
The shutters are now all finished apart from sanding down some dribbles of paint which got in between the slats, and N has moved on to the window frames, ready for the hanging of the shutters. I have been putting masking tape round the panes on all the windows involved, and on a few other windows and doors, ready for painting. I thought as I did so that the doors and windows with small panes were one of the things I liked most about the house when I first saw it, not thinking how fiddly they would be to paint, but think it will be well worth it. N has now finished the undercoat on all these (just as well as it’s now raining hard) and already the effect is much better; off-white satin as opposed to old flaky pale grey.
Saturday 30 September 2006
On Thursday afternoon we went out again, to visit Bernay this time, mainly to get further supplies of paint at Monsieur Bricolage. I got a useful under-bed plastic box on rollers, for storing summer clothes, and we stocked up at the supermarket. We went to the garden centre too, as N wanted sacks of peat to store the carrots and other vegetables through the winter, in wooden boxes in the wine cellar. There were even more Christmas decorations there than last time, and they still don’t look as though they’ve all been unpacked yet; metres and metres of wooden crèches, stars, candles, glittery leaves and those inflatable Father Christmases to put on the roof, which amused me last year both here and in Saint-Denis. In one corner, almost as an afterthought, there was a small selection of Halloween items.
I had remembered to take along a sample apple from our tree, and after consulting the apples chart myself, found a helpful employee out by the fruit trees. He reckoned it was a Reine de Reinette, and said we’d find it was good for eating and cooking, I said we already had.
When we got back there was a phone message from Monsieur P, asking if he could come and fetch the upstairs shutters, and before we could do anything he arrived with his assistant, who carefully took the shutters down the ladder after Monsieur P had unhooked them from beside the windows. He said he thought we might have been out in the garden painting shutters and was amused when I said we’d had to go out to get more paint. He asked me quietly if N wasn’t just a little bit fed up with painting shutters, and I said I thought he was. After taking down the shutters from the bedroom balcony he looked round the room and said what a wonderful house we had here, and that it reflected me. Both N and I were quite pleased and touched by this. (I think he cannot have been looking at N’s old painting/gardening trousers on the back of a chair.)
After much of Friday and Saturday spent sticking masking tape round window panes and going to get more tape from the Quincaillerie (me) and painting final coats on all downstairs window frames (N) it all looks very good. (I then spent nearly as much time removing the masking tape.) It’s not strictly speaking all the downstairs window frames, just those on the three sides of the house where there are beams and traditional louvred shutters. The windows on the fourth garden side (possibly built later) have brick surrounds and roll-down shutters, and will not be painted until next spring.
More apples have been retrieved, sorted, peeled and frozen and N has started putting perfect ones on the shelf in the first outhouse, claiming they that will last like this all winter. They are stored on the white packing paper Abels used for wrapping my china; there is a vast amount, and this is a perfect use for it. We have also noticed that the swallows in the garage seem to have left without saying goodbye, while we were in Paris.
In between times - after much indecision - N has finally ordered a new computer for his attic study (he maintained it was birthday present to himself) and set it all up.
I have begun to put away the garden furniture; although until the next batch of shutters has been painted there is not much room in the outhouse. I have also planted bulbs in the urns outside the wine cellar, having removed the old straggly petunias, and picked the last of the golden dahlias to put in a vase in the salon. Have also made seven pots of lovely marrow and ginger jam, once I had finally got hold of both the root and crystallized ginger required by the recipe. I am pleased to say that is the last of the giant marrows waiting patiently in the outhouse.
Meanwhile we expect three or four lots of guests over the next month or two - encouraging after so many were going to come and then didn’t, during the early summer - and a Christmas outing to the opera has been booked for December 21st! We are also going to Barcelona for a few days at the beginning of November, hence the Spanish course. N says he has begun to learn Spanish so many times; I have only begun once, in 1975, but have found on my shelves the book I had then and have taken it down to study. At the moment however, George Sand is taking much of my reading time - her style takes a little getting used to, currently a lot of history and family detail from before she was born.
We have been back in Normandy six days now, and only yesterday did I feel I had got to grips with all the apples in the garden! So many had fallen while we were away, and on Saturday morning I picked them all up, and put the worst straight into the compost bin. The rest I laid out on the garden table, where they filled an area of about a square metre. Several afternoons this week I have sat the table peeling and cutting them in the pale autumn sunshine, thinking this is what having a Normandy house and garden is all about. I have frozen several lots in chunks, some as compôte, and am on the second batch of apple jelly.
Friday 29 September 2006
Second batch of apple jelly a great success; darker and more flavour than the first, perhaps the apples were riper? I must now turn my attention to marrow and ginger jam, (and then Christmas puddings) while trying to keep abreast of the windfall apples day by day; apple dessert cake for this evening.
When we got back here last Friday we were keen to catch up with the post, which contained several birthday cards for N. He was also expecting a parcel from his daughter Kathryn, and I hoped there would be some news of the present I had ordered for him from the UK by various secret e-mails, which I had been tracking while in Paris. There was a delivery slip left by the postman, so we went straight to the post office, but it was only a very small package containing my Filofax diary pages for 2007, ordered by Internet! I was worried about the present, which should have arrived by then, but in the evening before I had time to e-mail an enquiry, our neighbour Annick (next door to Marie-Antoinette) rang the bell and said she had taken in a parcel for me, to save it having to be sent back. I was delighted, and so was she when I said it was N’s birthday present.
He fortunately was delighted too; it was a beautifully-crafted Georgian wooden music stand, easy to put together and very elegant, and he claimed he had always wanted one. It stood in the grande pièce being admired for a few days, but has now gone up to his attic study, where by happy coincidence it matches the beams.
The parcel from Kathryn arrived safely on Saturday morning; it was beautiful album of photos from the family visit/musical house party last month; lovely pictures and beautifully put together, we sat and looked at it for about half an hour. I was particularly pleased to see photos of the picnic, as I hadn’t taken any and it had been such a lovely sunny day.
I thought Annick might be interested to see what was in the parcel, so I invited her in for tea on Saturday afternoon. As I thought, she was interested to see the house; some years ago when she was first widowed and her son was small she had done some cleaning here. She told me she had been widowed twice and that you never knew what life was going to throw up; I agreed and said that although N and I had known each other for 10 years we had only been living together for a year; she said « You’re a young couple! »
We talked a lot about what do with apples; she said her second husband had several apple trees, and as he was a hunter she made apple sauce to e at with game. I said I really needed to find some blackberries, and she said there had been some round the corner on the road to Conches, but that they were mostly over. We looked at the vegetable garden; she said she always thought a vegetable garden kept a man occupied, which amused me greatly, and like Marie-Antoinette she knew a lot about growing vegetables but was surprised that I knew how to make curtains. She admired those in the grande pièce; I said they’d had to be very inexpensive from IKEA as there were eight of them.
N didn’t join in this tea party as he was busy in the outhouse painting shutters, taking up where he had left off before going to Switzerland. There are 10 shutters in this first (ground floor) batch, each requiring one undercoat and two top coats, each side. The deadline is next Monday, when Monsieur P and his band are coming to hang them. On Tuesday morning he took time off from the shutters - and I from peeling apples - and we went to L’Aigle market on the bus. N said what were we going to do for all that time? but found that there was so much to see that the time went very quickly. There were not so many plant stalls as usual, but we bought a roast chicken because it smelt so good, and a « real » Camembert, some ginger (for the marrow jam) and amazingly, some strawberries from the same stall as in July. N bought a teach yourself Spanish course, of which more later.
The shutters are now all finished apart from sanding down some dribbles of paint which got in between the slats, and N has moved on to the window frames, ready for the hanging of the shutters. I have been putting masking tape round the panes on all the windows involved, and on a few other windows and doors, ready for painting. I thought as I did so that the doors and windows with small panes were one of the things I liked most about the house when I first saw it, not thinking how fiddly they would be to paint, but think it will be well worth it. N has now finished the undercoat on all these (just as well as it’s now raining hard) and already the effect is much better; off-white satin as opposed to old flaky pale grey.
Saturday 30 September 2006
On Thursday afternoon we went out again, to visit Bernay this time, mainly to get further supplies of paint at Monsieur Bricolage. I got a useful under-bed plastic box on rollers, for storing summer clothes, and we stocked up at the supermarket. We went to the garden centre too, as N wanted sacks of peat to store the carrots and other vegetables through the winter, in wooden boxes in the wine cellar. There were even more Christmas decorations there than last time, and they still don’t look as though they’ve all been unpacked yet; metres and metres of wooden crèches, stars, candles, glittery leaves and those inflatable Father Christmases to put on the roof, which amused me last year both here and in Saint-Denis. In one corner, almost as an afterthought, there was a small selection of Halloween items.
I had remembered to take along a sample apple from our tree, and after consulting the apples chart myself, found a helpful employee out by the fruit trees. He reckoned it was a Reine de Reinette, and said we’d find it was good for eating and cooking, I said we already had.
When we got back there was a phone message from Monsieur P, asking if he could come and fetch the upstairs shutters, and before we could do anything he arrived with his assistant, who carefully took the shutters down the ladder after Monsieur P had unhooked them from beside the windows. He said he thought we might have been out in the garden painting shutters and was amused when I said we’d had to go out to get more paint. He asked me quietly if N wasn’t just a little bit fed up with painting shutters, and I said I thought he was. After taking down the shutters from the bedroom balcony he looked round the room and said what a wonderful house we had here, and that it reflected me. Both N and I were quite pleased and touched by this. (I think he cannot have been looking at N’s old painting/gardening trousers on the back of a chair.)
After much of Friday and Saturday spent sticking masking tape round window panes and going to get more tape from the Quincaillerie (me) and painting final coats on all downstairs window frames (N) it all looks very good. (I then spent nearly as much time removing the masking tape.) It’s not strictly speaking all the downstairs window frames, just those on the three sides of the house where there are beams and traditional louvred shutters. The windows on the fourth garden side (possibly built later) have brick surrounds and roll-down shutters, and will not be painted until next spring.
More apples have been retrieved, sorted, peeled and frozen and N has started putting perfect ones on the shelf in the first outhouse, claiming they that will last like this all winter. They are stored on the white packing paper Abels used for wrapping my china; there is a vast amount, and this is a perfect use for it. We have also noticed that the swallows in the garage seem to have left without saying goodbye, while we were in Paris.
In between times - after much indecision - N has finally ordered a new computer for his attic study (he maintained it was birthday present to himself) and set it all up.
I have begun to put away the garden furniture; although until the next batch of shutters has been painted there is not much room in the outhouse. I have also planted bulbs in the urns outside the wine cellar, having removed the old straggly petunias, and picked the last of the golden dahlias to put in a vase in the salon. Have also made seven pots of lovely marrow and ginger jam, once I had finally got hold of both the root and crystallized ginger required by the recipe. I am pleased to say that is the last of the giant marrows waiting patiently in the outhouse.
Meanwhile we expect three or four lots of guests over the next month or two - encouraging after so many were going to come and then didn’t, during the early summer - and a Christmas outing to the opera has been booked for December 21st! We are also going to Barcelona for a few days at the beginning of November, hence the Spanish course. N says he has begun to learn Spanish so many times; I have only begun once, in 1975, but have found on my shelves the book I had then and have taken it down to study. At the moment however, George Sand is taking much of my reading time - her style takes a little getting used to, currently a lot of history and family detail from before she was born.
# posted by Chez Katherine @ 1:19 AM 
