Today, my little family and I were given the honour of being invited to a French family get together. We have seen rather a lot of Chantal and Thierry in recent months and they arranged a soiree in order for their eldest two daughters to meet us.
We have the most amusing Franglais type conversations, where I start a sentence and someone else will finish it, or when things move beyond my command of the language, trying to get the finer points of an idea across using the words you know can be challenging. I love to try. I don't even have to plan out what I'm going to say, I have enough confidence just to go for it, sometimes that approach works just fine, and sometimes you're met with the three second silence when they are trying to put meaning to the 'word soup' you've just delivered.
I find I'm really learning a lot in a short space of time which I'm so grateful for. but, the thing is, what do they get?
I'm not conceited enough to assume that it's as good for them as it is for us, even being the anglophiles that they obviously are.
They are now hooked on good 'ol English tea, the French stuff being virtually unrecognisable to us Brits.
They find the fact that we don't mind (too much) living in a caravan whilst we work on enough of the house to live in bemusing...and I have to admit here that I'm losing sight of why this seemed such a good idea, now that autumn is just around the corner.
All in all, I think we've been really lucky in meeting Chantal and Thierry and becoming good friends with such lovely people. I know that we've found in them, friends that are always ready to step into the breach and get their hands dirty, something that's becoming more and more rare in our modern, insular society. <3

Country Life

Now that August is upon us and the vegetable garden is laden with promise, I realise that Mother Nature has played a big trick on me.
On looking around at the bountiful treats in neighbouring gardens, I am less impressed with my flowering courgettes which seem to only produce the male flowers, my baby runner beans which will measure three whole inches if I use my husbands 'fishing' ruler.


My dwarf variety peas are a full 8" tall and produce two or three pods per day. The star of the show are the haricot verts who are very forgiving of the hot drought conditions and are giving me lots of beans <3 <3



The chilli plant is being very endearing in that the pods have formed 'couples'...one straight pod and one curled around it's middle,just like ballroom dancers, how sweet is that?



As I'm working in my workshop, I can enjoy the view of my miniature garden set out in front of me, I can almost smell the swaying sunflowers in the garden next door which is a sight to behold. OK, they are around the corner, but I can imagine them. There were a couple of them in a vase in my studio until yesterday, when a child of mine...who will remain nameless, knocked the vase off the top of the desk and emptied a couple of pints of water into the paper slot in the back of the new printer. Still waiting for the thing to dry out before I dare switch it on to suss out the damage.