Arrived in France June 2009

>

We are now five weeks into our time away and we are now in France. We spent the first week in the UK visiting friends, family and also a long lost friend from my nursing days.

Then off to Grenada in the Caribbean for 14 days. This is one of our “must do before we die” things and now we have been to the Caribbean we would really like to return one day I have added some photographs.

Photos:

Lady in fishmarker La Source our resort

Flower in colonial garden Damage by the Hurricane Ivan of 2004

France – We started off very busy and have continued in the same vein, mainly social I must say. When we arrived a note was waiting for us inviting us to dinner with some friends, which was a very nice welcome and a taste of things to come! The day after we arrived we went to a Barbeque and met up with some old and new friends plus my cousin Sue and husband Tony, who came the next day and stayed with us for the week. Luckily they are very relaxed and really wanted to chill out, which gave us the opportunity to unpack and reaquaint ourselves with Capet. The next day some more of my relatives arrived from the UK Paul and Monica who just popped in as they were on a driving tour of France, it was lovely to see them and quickly catch up on family news and gossip.

When we arrived the house and garden were well maintained including a thriving vegetable garden, so thank you to Aunty Diane and Philippe. It has been really great to arrive and not have to do any work other than what we want to do. Terry’s project this year is quite minor, he is going to build doors into the wood shed, nothing too hard but he has already bought the essential circular saw, men and their tools!! My priority was to have a raised bed in my greenhouse, most of the preparations were completed last year but the bed not made, so with Tony’s help and some wood ‘borrowed’ from the neighbouring farm I have a wonderful raised bed which boasts lettuce, courgette, aubergine, French beans and capsicum, I could go on but won’t bore the pants off anyone who decides to read this.

As usual we have had one or two things go wrong, starting with the electric gates, they had been working the day before we arrived but of course we arrive suitcases in hand and the gates won’t open, with some brute force and determination and then Terry remembered the key and managed to open them. One and half weeks later and numerous phone calls in French and alot of anglofrench the ‘gate technician’ arrived last night at 6pm. We had to have the beams replaced and are waiting for a new intercom and what caused these problems? You might well ask. It was an invasion of ants that had got into the electrics, as a friend said today what is the use of ants what do they do??? Who knows except they can create quite an expense.

The other problem, which, I might add has been an ongoing problem, is our tractor mower not being able to cut the back paddock, now I think the blade has dropped off and enough said with regard to the bloody thing except I will need to mow the lawn again at the weekend!

I suppose the biggest problem to Terry is the fact that his Mole explosive machine no longer works, he mended it once with superglue and it broke again so he tried to repeat the exercise and has lost a part in the garden, back to Gamm Vert (garden centre) to buy another one. I am sure he is going to say thats why his mole count went down last year and on that note he thinks he has exploded one mole so far but without the body it doesn’t count. Looking at the state of the lawn I think he will be very busy once he is fully armed with a fully working explosive ‘gadget’!

The weather has been amazing since we have been here and we have just heard that it will be in the mid 30s for the next 10 days so we have decided to erect the swimming pool earlier this year.

Petanque season in SOS has started with the arrival of the last team member ala Terence, I had forgotten what an amusing sight he makes going off on a Monday evening wearing his beret in the old blue ami 8 what a plonker, but saying that he won this week, his team members put it down to beginners luck for the year.

Now getting back into the French life we started more French classes with another teacher, this time it is a beginners class with a Dutch French teacher who lives in New Zealand 6 months of the year, but got to say we were both impressed with her style of teaching so maybe we might, I said might, learn some French.

I am sure that’s enough for one day, except to say that we are currently arranging for some chickens to be delivered when the grandchildren arrive in September, it took some negotiation which comprised of some up to date English women’s magazines – anyone coming over please keep me supplied with my bartering currency. Ha ha

Abientot

2009 Leaving Australia

Sorrento Beach

Where has the last 8 months gone, we are on countdown for the 12th May, ready for another adventure in the Northern Hemisphere. What are we going to miss when we go other than the obvious family and friends and the grandchildren. We will miss being here when the Day light saving referendum takes place, this country is unbelievable and back in the dark ages literally, luckily alot of young people and young people with families have seen the light and are voting for daylight saving unfortunately there are still some Dinosaurs who thinks their curtains will fade and the cows will be confused. As for us we have already put in our votes and pray that Western Australia will come into the 21st century and think of others rather than themselves. (I will step off my soap box now - sorry). What else will be miss, not the sunshine as we are going into Winter, well Australia's version of winter which really amounts to bright days and a bit of rain, I must say no one seems to possess a coat, hat, scarves or gloves so not bad really. This is web address for my photos from a three day trek I completed a couple of weeks ago, the Australian bush is stunning. http://picasaweb.google.com/aussie175/BibblumenTrackApril09#5325959012086960962 (cut and paste this into your search engine) when on the page it takes a couple of seconds for the images to download
I look forward to keeping everyone up to date with our adventures over the next months, I hope you enjoy my rantings.

Packing to go - countdown

Only 5 days to go, I am really looking forward to going back to Australia but not looking forward to leaving France!!!! I think if the weather here was awful, cold and raining I would find it easier to leave but its not, the weather is amazing, very warm and very sunny. The garden is looking superb thanks to our son in law Steve as he sharpened the tractor mower blades and took on the tasl of mowing the 'park' to bowling green perfection (slight exaggeration, but non the less, it looks most impressive).
No blog can go without a mole score and here it is Terry has now got the grand total of 4 moles
( he said 6!), all of which he has posed in different positions on the window sill for photographs, sad bugger, they all look the same to me. The last two moles have been killed in the last week after a couple of moleless months, has he lost his touch we ask, but no the moles were on the attack and become very illusive, undaunted, Terry and Steve out moled them and filled the holes with water!!
Sorry boring........
We had a fabulous 2 weeks with Kaliska, Steve, Ella, Chloe and Owen, an experience I don't think they will forget in hurry their French holiday.
Yes, the packing up has started but also a week on our own to socialise with some of the friends we have made in the area, to say good bye and wish them luck for the Winter, sorry had to get that in as we are looking forward to going back to the sunshine.

September update

Hope you enjoy the photos below, but just to explain, the first one is of a lightening storm around the house which lasted about an hour without rain, it was quite spectacular, quite common for this area we have been told.
The next few are samples of meat in various night food markets, the lambs around the fire was something we had not seen before and well worth a couple of photos, unfortunately, we didn't actually eat at this particular market and only went to support a friend who was dancing (Gasgoyne dancing) in a display so went to support her. Anyway the next photo is of duck carcass, we were encouraged to go to this night market last week by the wife of the mayor of this village. Apparently the evening is 'Europe' renowned and people come from all over Europe to attend this meal, well, we took Kaliska, Steve and the children, took our place in the line for the food and were given, melon, ham, roll and two pieces of duck carcass. Comments in our group ranged between, road kill to flat duck, dog bones etc etc, so very different, but a fun night with disco dancing in the village square overlooked by the ruins of an old eglise (church) probably 300 or 400 hundred years old.
The rest of the photos of our dear grandchildren having fun in our garden, they are catching yabbies (languistines see photo), climbing over the tree trunk over the pond, picking vegetables, swimming in the pool, playing on the rope/old tyre swing from the oak tree, etc etc etc, needless to say they are having a great time and also a great deal of freedom and open space.
We have started having French lessons with a group of ex pat English, apparently most of them are in their second year and this is the beginners class, apparently one of them told me they don't get much opportunity to speak French!!! doh
Talking of which I volunteered and helped out at the duck farm restaurant last week end, I was actually promoted to serve at the tables, bearing in mind the chef does not speak English and none of the clients spoke English, it was all quite embarrassing starting with me taking out the bread (after being introduced by the proprietor to the whole room, I think he was introducing me an Australian who is his neighbour and wished to learn French) anyway everyone was really friendly, back to bread, much of which I dropped on the floor, then I had to give out the foie gras, large dish for big table, small dish for small tables etc, guess who got that wrong, chef was very pleasant and acted promptly and gave extra to the large tables without doing a Gordon Ramsay at me. I decided to stay out in the kitchen and load the dishwasher much safer bet, anyway I seem to be understanding more French and learnt a couple of extra words.
That day continued to be memorable, when I got back Terry said that one of the horses in the next field had a huge piece of wood sticking out of it (probably panicked by the storm the night before). The horses belong to our neighbour who use the house for holidays, we did not have their phone number and bearing in mind a. we dont speak much French, b. it was a Sunday and c. we didn't have a clue what to do. So naturally we phoned the police, after explaining (in french) that a horse had a accident not with a car but a piece of wood (this is where my French stopped ?bleeding ?sticking out its side ?maybe in the lung. After about 10 fruitless minutes of trying to get the stupid women to understand we rang our friend at the duck farm and he called the Vet, and unfortunately the poor mare had to be put down.
Never a dull moment.

Abiento

Photos

End of August 2008

Very special newsflash!!!!!

Annie and Dominic are now proud parents of Abigail Chloe, born today 29^th August at 10.15pm, weighing in at 7lb 6oz. Everyone is very well and excited and very very tired, it has been a long day.

That makes us grandparents to four darling children, three of which are girls, poor Owen is somewhat outnumbered.

Well no excuse to write the blog today with such exciting news. We have had visitors for the last three weeks non stop including my brother and sister and their partners. It is the first time for Gill and Phil has come to see us in France and we had a fantastic two weeks, albeit a very busy two weeks, which included a couple of days in Pyrenees and a day in Biarritz, many day markets, a number of evening fetes and of course a few Aussie barbeques to meet the locals and other members of the family who live in France,

At last the weather has changed and we are experiencing fantastic sunny days, luckily the pool has been erected and very serviceable. In fact, we have just had a dip. We are now having 9 days without visitors so all hell has let loose in the DIY department, Terry has almost finished repainting the lounge and giving it some damp proofing and I have been in garden, but as they say all work makes Jack a dull man, so we have already had a day out on my uncles boat on D' Lot which was wonderful and very restful. This week end will be full on with lunches and fetes, so we wont be too over worked.

We are throughly enjoying the good life aspect of France and are gathering the fruits of our labour, ie the vegetable patch, the tomatoes are ripening at quite a speed, plenty of zuchinnis and french beans and hopefully our figs will be ready before we leave in four weeks time.

Its our 35th wedding annerversery on Monday, where has that time gone?? I am not sure what we will be doing, Terry asked me what I wanted to mark the occasion, to be honest, I feel so privilaged with our life that there is nothing else I could ask for, we arevery happy with healthy children and grandchildren, a house in France what a life!!!!!

For those of you who have requested it, below is the recipe to my 'famous' tarte:

Tarte a la Rhubarbe et Citron

(I have found this recipe very simple and have used frozen berries instead of rhubarb but make sure you really strain them well or mixture too watery) Bon Appetite

Preheat the oven to 375 (190 C) Gas 5

For 8 people (I think really 6!!)

Cooking time 25 mins

1 tart tin 28 x 3cm (11 x 11 ¼ in)

Shortcrust pastry

For Rhubarb Filling

400g (14oz) rhubarb washed, peeled and chopped into 2cm(3/4 in) pieces

100g (4oz) sugar

200ml water

Lemon Cream Filling

2 egg yolks

50g (2 oz) caster sugar

70mls double cream (I use Creme Fraise)

Finely grated zest of a lemon

Preparing the pastry case

Allow the dough to come to room temp. Butter the sides of the tart tin and base.

Roll the prepared dough out to fit up the sides of the flan dish. Rest for 2 -3 mins Place into tart dish and refrigerate for a min of half an hr.

Blind bake the pastry case – 10mins

Prepare the rhubarb filling

In a saucepan, bring to the boil the sugar and water, then add the chopped rhubarb and simmer for 2 mins, strain into a colander and reserve.

Preparing the lemon cream filling

Beat the egg yolks and sugar in bowl for 10 mins on high speed, until the volume has tripled.

Mix in the cream and lemon zest.

Cooking the tart

Distribute the rhubarb over the bottom of the tart, then spread with the lemon cream filling.

Cook in oven at the same temp for 25 – 30mins

Serving

Remove the tart from the oven and sprinkle with extra caster sugar.

Cool down for 1 hour from serving.

August photos

Terry, Pete and Wyn, dancing to the band






Spain