Tag Archives: Feeling blessed

Two Christmas’s

25 Wednesday Dec 2019

Posted by in Friends, Galavanting, laughter & giggles, My family and other furry creatures, People, Simple things, The adventures of living life in the French countryside, The continuing adventure, The seasons

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It’s been a whirlwind few days after our son Tom surprised us on Saturday. We have tried to cram so much into three days, because he had already committed to going to my sisters house for Christmas day, and it was only right that he fulfilled that commitment.

We decided to have two Christmas’s one with them and one on the day.

On the Saturday we went out to visit someone who has been nothing but kind to us. She is alone and for me Christmas is about understanding and giving something other than gifts: time. We had already arranged to visit her, and Tom and Chris (the boys) volunteered to come with us. Trundling into the back of RD’s van (totally illegal!) and moaning about their arses hurting them.

When we arrived these two young men were so polite and kind, even sorting out some technical stuff for her on her computer. I was so proud of them both: another gift.

We then took a detour to the medieval city of Domfront, with its beautiful lights, and had a few drinks in a quintessential French tabac. The weather was awful, but it couldn’t damp our spirits.

It’s strange how we can all revert back to being ‘mum and dad’ with our kids. Tom has a good job, lives in Newcastle, contacts me when he wants and needs to, and I pretty much leave him to his own devices. He is an adult I am not an ‘over motherer’. I had him to live his life. But on Saturday they went out late and drove to a town near us to see if any bars were open. We didn’t go, we would have ‘cramped their style’, and also we were knackered! But they said they were coming back for chicken burgers and we waited up for them, knowing the bars in France do not stay open late. But when they hadn’t come back by 1am we started to worry, wtf! I looked at RD and we both started to laugh, because he felt the same. Our son looks after himself in Newcastle all the time, and we never worry, yet as soon as he comes over to us we become worried parents. I gave in and rang him. A very pissed Tom rang me back from a house in Lassay, they had been invited by some French girls they had met in a bar (nothing changes!) Tom thought it was hilarious that his mum was ringing him. I cooked the chicken burgers and left them out for them. When we got up the next morning they had obviously cooked chips, because they were everywhere. Nothing changes!

We visited Mayenne on the Sunday, where Christmas activities were taking place, and had mulled wine and hot chocolate.

When we got home we had an alternative Christmas dinner, of roast lamb and all the trimmings.

Followed by an evening in front of the fire and TV. Bless Chris he had driven for over ten hours to get Tom to us, so that was him!

On Monday we went shopping, I cannot begin to tell you the amount of wine and cheese they bought! We played Monopoly, and ate spaghetti Bolognaise very very late.

It was a joy to see RD with them. I realised just how much he misses the banter of being around men. They always used to love tormenting RD, but they never won, he always got them in the end, and nothing changes. I love this video, it sums these few days up.

https://www.facebook.com/moira.swindell/videos/2869801423030602/

It was all going too fast, and Tuesday came too quickly. Very early in the morning, in the dark before dawn, we hugged them goodbye. Am I crying now? Of course I am.

So it’s Christmas day, and we are still in bed, even the Welshies are worn out from the whirlwind of fun.

We will have our traditional turkey dinner, and have a very quiet day. But we will have the greatest gift of all: memories.

Have a mellow Christmas folks.

Rosie

Inky blue skies, and howling winds, counting my blessings.

26 Tuesday Nov 2019

Posted by in Learning and Evolving, mental health, My home, Reflections, The continuing adventure

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I am sitting here in one of our wingback chairs, and this is the view from our window. We woke up this morning to howling winds and rain; although the rain is pretty much the norm now, as it has rained every day for the past month!

It is 8.30 but the sky is literally a dark inky blue. The wind is whipping up a frenzy around our little house on the hill, our shutters are rattling, the trees are bending in the wind and I can feel a draft blowing up from the cellar. I am drinking tea, Daisy the cat is snoring and I have two sleeping Welshies around me.

I am braving myself because today I have to split logs. We ordered some as a top up, or stop gap, so that on days like today we didn’t have to chop and split our huge amount of wood available from our very own garden. But there was a problem with the wood and the delivery was cancelled!

With RD at work, decorating our bedroom, Felling cherry trees and cleaning out the cellar, which is finally dry now the cess is working properly, poor RD feels overwhelmed. So we still haven’t had time to cut up the huge branches from the oak, that are buried under the bramble in our garden now! That will be a job for after Christmas when RD has two weeks off. But when the cess was repaired the huge pine tree that was cut down nearly two years ago was pulled out of the ditch by the samaritan Marc (I think that will be his name now) and was laying in the front of our garden. It had seasoned all on its own in the ditch. So RD got to it last weekend and cut it up. Some of it is too big to be split, it has to be chopped, but we have smaller logs and some oak left from what had been chopped. I need to split them for us to use this week, or we will have no fire!

Imagine me today, welligogs on, fighting my way across the from the goats shed (no we have no goats they used ro live there before we moved in) through the now sodden quagmire that is our garden (and we live on a hill!) with a wheelbarrow full of logs buffeted by the wind!

Would I have it any other way? No I wouldn’t!

I am blessed.

Rosie

Sometimes I just get inspired

18 Monday Nov 2019

Posted by in Simple things, The adventures of living life in the French countryside, The continuing adventure, The seasons

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I woke up this morning, came downstairs, opened the blinds and was greeted by this….

It is probably the thing that keeps me going the most. To look out at this view and think to myself am blessed.

Whatever the season the sunrises always take my breath away, but autumn, with its mists and the colours in the skies just makes them so atmospheric and poignant.

Being on the pinnacle of a hill on mornings like this it feels as if we are floating amongst the clouds, like a little island.

Every day is a new beginning, every day is something to cherish. I know that I need to treasure it for I also know that one day I will leave this house, and being able to wake up to this will only be a memory.

Here and now, here and now.

Rosie

Autumn: Swallows

15 Sunday Sep 2019

Posted by in Change is a coming, My home, Simple things, The adventures of living life in the French countryside, The continuing adventure, The seasons

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When we moved here our house had not been lived in for over three years, and our old barn had become a residence of choice for the swallows every spring; with it’s lack of the likelihood of interference from humans, and the abundance of tall trees, and thereby insects our barn was the perfect choice. And then the English came along!

But life was looking out for our swallows because these English have not blocked up the barn (we’d have a job with half the roof missing) we have welcomed the swallows.

So every spring the babies can be heard chirping in the eves, and now they have come to realise that we will not hurt them the swallows no-longer dive bomb us when we go to the barn to move something back into the house (which has been moved to the barn and back, barn and back so many times!)

This winter the barn roof will finally be replaced by H, we hope to save that beautiful old building if possible. But we will ensure that the swallows still have somewhere to stay, they are part of the fabric of this home and all that it entails.

Every summer as we sit in the garden in the early evening we are treated to an aerial display as the swallows teach their young to catch the numerous insects milling about in the air in the late evening sunshine. In fact we get two displays because as the swallows take their young to bed the bats then come out as twilight arrives and take over the second sitting for the insect banquet.

But what has inspired me to write this post is what happened last night. The Indian summer continues and the past few days we have reached temperatures into the late twenties early thirties. After my shower I stood at the bedroom window and watched as the swallows began to gather. We have a collection of phone wires for our community and swallows love phone wires; add to that our trees and the corn in the field and the swallows found their ideal spot to swoop (a collective noun for swallows). It was amazing to watch as they swooped past our window over to the field opposite.

More and more arrived swooping high and low, sitting on the phone wires, just looking at me, as I stood like a mad woman in my pyjamas videoing them. My photos do not do the spectacle justice : they were preparing to say goodbye.

Autumn is here, despite the hot weather, and the Swallows know it is time to start their preparation to leave.

I realised that although they will be back next year it may not be the same swallows, many will die on the arduous journey to Africa and the Sahara; and it again highlighted to me how (to quote George Benson) everything must change, nothing stays the same. It cannot.

I am truly blessed.

Rosie

Simple things, simple things.

if you want to listen to the fabulous George B singing about change here it is.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oqtHo0pU-1M

The little blue bird

15 Wednesday May 2019

Posted by in My family and other furry creatures, My home, Simple things, The adventures of living life in the French countryside, The continuing adventure

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Image result for birds with blue heads in france

Le Mesange Bleue or Blue Tit

As you may know by now we only have one chicken and Claude the cockerel left (by the skin of his teeth I may add, and Wiglet still looks at him longingly through the fence!)  Read here The chicken may be laying but something is clearly coming into the hen enclosure at night and stealing her eggs methinks. So despite no eggs we cannot put the chickens in the pot (it is just not our way) and they are living out there retirement in the enclosure the Rich made for them last year.   You can read about that here

The new home that we had lined up for them, where we thought they would mingle with other chickens, did not go ahead: as it turns out the odious person who was going to have them was in fact going to eat them! Animal lover? I don’t think so! So the chicken & Claude stayed with us. As always life showed us the way.

So every morning they are fed the scraps of food (no cooked meat as we don’t want to encourage les Ratz!) and some grain. Rich is the main feeder of the chickens and over the past couple of months he noticed that a pretty little blue, grey and yellow bird follows him everywhere, singing to him and sometimes shouting at him if he is late feeding the chickens. The little bird is a blue tit.

At first Rich thought he was imagining it until it started to stand on our steps outside our French windows (or are they just windows in France?!) and shout at him through the glass.

It didn’t care that our house is in fact a house full of predators: with four cats and two Welsh Terriers

At the weekend it hopped around furiously on the patio until Rich succumbed and went out to feed the chickens. As Rich starts to walk across the garden it flies ahead of him calling all of it’s friends: the sparrows and they would all swoop down to eat the rice, pasta and soaked bread.

One Saturday as we were gettting ready to go out it landed on the windowsill outside our bedroom window and proceeded to shout at Rich because he was late!

But now the little thing is like part of our family; worryingly it has become so tame that it sat under one of the sun chairs on the patio the other day singing to us, despite there being a cat sunning itself on the chair above!

I know that i have shared recently that we did not know if we would stay here, or whether it was time for change; and I am open to all possibilities. But right now life is showing us the way: Rich’s work has picked up and he has regular clients now. I have registered to provide a service over here mainly, because my blog is going to hit 50,000 views this month and I am going to self publish: I have too many people contacting me asking me where they can buy my book. (Sorry that is why I have been away from this blog so much.) and things are looking up.

So going with the flow of life showing me the way I stand in my garden, full of trees, including the fallen cherry, and I soak it up: I no longer take it for granted.

This garden is truly a haven for the birds, from the owl in the cherry by the barn, to the woodpecker knock knocking on one if the giant oaks; to the blue tit who seems to have become our friend; and I know that  I am  blessed to live here and have this experience.

I stood this morning in the warm spring sunshine watching the little blue tit and all his compadre’s eating last nights chips, despite me standing there, and I thought: this is a memory to keep Moisy.

Have a good week folks.

Moisy

 

Image result for birds with blue heads in france

 

Do you ever take the time?

01 Thursday Nov 2018

Posted by in My home, The adventures of living life in the French countryside, The continuing adventure, The seasons

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I ask this question to you all, do you ever take the time to just see what is around you and look at it in awe. I know I have so much that can make me think feel this way, I am surrounded by Mother Nature, God, the Tao Te Ching, whatever you want to call it, it is all around me every day; and I know for that I am blessed. I have never lost sight of that.

But I know that some think they don’t have the countryside around them, so it is not so easy to see the beauty in the simple things; but it is! It is all around us all, no matter where you live, look at the the rain for instance falling around us, from the drop on a leaf, or railing, to the blade of grass, glistening with beauty. Have you ever stopped and just watched a drop of rain hanging from a rail, quivering and glistening, and waited until it plopped?

Rain knows no bounds, it is in the countryside, the cities, the suburbs, in slums. No matter what you feel about your life it is amazing if you just stop and look for a moment.

Or what about the sky? When was the last time that you just stopped for a moment and looked at the sky?

When ‘The War’ was raging around Rich and I eleven years ago I sought solace in cloud watching, as I watched the clouds just go on their way, slowly, unhurried and always  so beautiful and serene I was reminded that in the whole universe the pain that we were going through would pass, and wasn’t as bad, or as important as I thought.

I have never stopped cloud watching, and living here I am blessed every day.

So Ithought that on the first day of November I would share with you some of the beautiful sunrises that we were given to us in the month of October. I want you to imagine me, every morning at about eight o clock out in the garden snapping these shots, in my dressing gown (it’s spotty if you want the detail!) This one in particular was what inspired me:

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One morning when we woke it was chilly, despite it being very warm for October the previous few days, I opened the door to let the cats in and the dogs out and this caught my eye, the mist over the valley and it just rising took my breath away and I just had to capture it.

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Rich got up to find me scurrying around the garden in my pyjamas and said ‘What are you doing now?!’

‘Look at this I said, we are so lucky.’

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This set the pattern for the next few weeks and I hope that you enjoy them.

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I ask you all to just take the time today to just stop for thirty seconds and see something beautiful. Here is what I saw this morning, looks like November is bringing it’s own beauty to the party..

As the great poet W.H Davies said ‘What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare.’

Moisy