Tag Archives: French Rural living

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

Thunderbolts and lightening

25 Tuesday Jun 2019

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

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Image result for pictures of lightningIt has been warm here in France, but not as hot as last year (yet!) It appears that we have a red alert for hot weather for the rest of the week with temparatures in the high thirties. Me-thinks my shutters will be down and the fan will be on in our bedroom for the Welshies. They are not due another cut until next month.

I digress – this is my impromptu story:

Last night we had one humdinger of a thunderstorm. It had been warm and cloudy all day, but not particularly humid. Thunderstorms are often predicted for this region, it is so open and vast; so we have come to take the warning with a pinch of salt! But last night just as we sat down for our tea (I come from Essex you have tea not dinner!) ensconced in front of the TV with all our favourite soaps to watch,  good old Eastenders started to pixelate. You could see an eye and a hand, or a leg and and a window and they were all speaking like daleks! We  looked out of our huge window and whilst it was cloudy the clouds were not ominous; but on closer inspection the monsoon rains that were tipping water into our garden were!

Image result for pictures of monsoon rains

So we resigned ourselves to eating our tea without TV, but watched in amusement as the satellite battled on trying to provide a service. Then we heard the thunder…

Now since living here in amongst all of the other things that have happened to us including the roof and the tornado  ,we also got hit by lightening which took out our internet and phone over two years ago.

It was a lesson learnt and when a storm hits we know to unplug the internet. But the storm last night was probably the biggest storm that we had seen to date. After the satellite struggled it was put out of it’s misery by the electric tripping out and we sat in darkness (even though it was only 9.30pm and should have been sunny). As all of the lights burst back into life we decided that we needed to batten down the hatches (literally!)

Image result for pictures of lightning

We ran around the house closing all of our shutters and unplugging all of our appliances except for the fridges. We know that if lightening were to hit it could literally blow all appliances that were plugged in. As I went to close the shutters I was mesemerised by the lightening: it was quite literally all around us. Not just one bolt, but four or five at a time, hitting the fields outside. But as four simultaneously hit our garden just feet away from the house I realised that I needed to close those shutters fast as I was in a precarious position.

I have never seen anything llke it before, not from the position of a solitary house on top of a hill.  I moved down to the kitchen and stood at our double glass doors mesmerised by the show in front of me: it was as if a wizard battle was going on above us, and I half expected Dumbledore to land in my garden!!

The rain was torrential as if the angels had hoses above our house and were trying to wash it away. But bless her – she stood firm as she always does.  Danny(remember the name changes read here told me to move away from the doors as the lightening was so close; and we decided to call it a night and go to bed.

As I lay in bed, with the Welshie’s snoring beside me and the fan buzzing away I could hear the thunder making it’s way back to us for a second onslaught. I heard the fan go off as the electric disconnected, and then I heard it buzz back into life as the storm finally moved on.

But as I sit here this morning the sun is shining, the swimming pool has overflowed in the night and the birds are singing again. Danny (formerly known as Rich) has checked the house and garden and there are not visible signs of damage – the house on the hill stood firm again.

But I have learnt living here that nature will never be beaten, and when she gives me sunsets like this I hope that she isn’t- she always knows best.

Rosie

Other stories you may want to read

Other stories you may want to read

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We have a roof – for the first time in three years!

01 Thursday Nov 2018

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

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This was our roof from three years ago, after it had been attacked by storm Katie and annihalated by a twister going right through our garden.

As most of you know it has been the hardest part of this adventure to find work, or people you can trust to work for; and so we had no money to repair it. I have written only recently how we did not let that stop us, we carried on, we had no choice. (Boy can I see that what Rich and I went through was in prep for this adventure, because we already knew that nothing could beat us!)

But as I wrote in September the roof was finally being replaced; and oh my it is a piece of art!

Our wonderful builder Rob is a skilled man, because the roof had been open to the elements for so long some of the rafters had to be repaired (not replaced because bless him he knew we had to keep costs down.)

Being a carpenter Rob repaired joists and the result, particularly at the back of the roof is stunning; with it’s curves it looks like a wing of one of the kestrels or eagles that fly around us up here.

I love the contrast of the black tiles (black is de rigeur because we are in a protected national park, in fact we have only just found out that our barn is classed as a listed building because it was built in 1812) and the zinc edging that catches the light.

Having lived for three winters with the rain pouring in at times (we only had a worn out old tarp to protect it and we had bowles everywhere catching the water) my husband now dances round the kitchen every time it rains singing the ‘We’re lovely and dry’ song! Small things eh?!

This year we have achieved a lot with new doors and the new roof we are now warm and toasty; which means that the electric heater in the kitchen keeps us warm and the old calor gas fire, that we had in the kitchen, has now been moved up into the bedroom where I write, no more cold feet and hands for me this winter!

Small things, they are what matter.

Moisy