Last Friday the weather was beautiful, I spent the afternoon in the garden taking photos for social media, and realising that I couldn’t sell some of my finds, these ones are staying with me.

As we sat into the early evening drinking wine, the wind started to get up and the black clouds rolled in again. The thunder came rumbling down the road, carried by the thick black clouds and in we scooted. The rain came and that was it for the evening.

Saturday morning arrived and it was darker than the gloomiest winter day, literally black! We had been off grid all night and remained that way as we raised the blind, heard the thunder, and saw the lighting striking out from the black clouds, there was torrential rain and a raging torrent that used to be our road.

Forget the winter winds, forget the tornado, or the well drying up, this time there is something to be said for living on a hill!

The black clouds held on all day, rolling in over and over again blowing off into the distance and then rolling back again, they clearly thought that they had forgotten business.

The dogs hurrumped, and sighed and slept, the cats slept, and we cleaned the house.

My poor flowers that on Friday were stunning…

have now been washed away, they are so sodden I cannot dead head them, my beautiful clematis has it’s wonderful heads bowed, and it is fair to say the garden is a tad wet. My glorious honeysuckle that is filling the garden with perfume, is still trying, when you can go out there the smell is beautiful, a smell of summer, a wet one!

Sunday came, and more storms came with it. Pictures started to appear on Facebook of shops in Mayenne, large supermarkets, whose roofs had cracked open and they had to be evacuated, other shops flooded out and attended by the pompiers (fire brigade) who were having to pump them out.

I gave up with my wet washing, decided to be typically English and pegged it out, in the rain, anyway. There is no pollution here, so it will be wet, but it will smell nice. Might have something living in it by the time I get to bring it in, but it will smell nice!

By the evening the sun came out, it is still really hot here despite the rain, just wet! So we took the opportunity to have a vin rouge in the garden for a couple of hours, until the rain came back!

Our poor phone keeps cutting us off mid conversation with people because it has not had a full charge in days, as we are so often off grid!

Today there was a promise of a respite according to the weather forecast. It did not happen and this was our terrace earlier today…

The ironing pile has gone down, odd jobs have been fixed, lawns have not been mowed (are you kidding!) but are still growing, and our kitchen roof, or our tarpaulin since losing it over two years ago, has held up well. Although we have had moments of putting bowls out all over the kitchen, and, as we always do, we have laughed about it, but that is for another blog.

And tonight? Guess what? It’s raining! But we don’t care, because we have each other, our animals, our friends, and, as you know if you read Karen’s post, an exciting summer ahead.

I don’t complain about the weather, to quote Byron Katie, you just have to love what is.

Comfort food tonight homemade sausage roll, with our local butchers sausage meat, chips and beans. You can take the girl out of England………

Moisy