Charlie

Happy (f)easter

Happy easter everyone! The kids have been creative in school making chickens out of camambert boxes, filled with chocolate eggs. And at home Lola and me have done some old fashioned egg painting.

Tom and Isabel (the neighbours of the mill) have been staying here with their four kids. The kids have had a great time, making treasure maps, splashing in the river, doing egg hunts and endless bouncing on the trampoline. Unfortunately british and french easter holidays are not held at the same time. Charlie misses them very much!

Buziness...

Long time no blog! I do see that if I am not prepared to write something each day the connection is broken..however, here I am with some bee news in this endless blue sky spring of ours...perhaps one of the up sides of global warming...

One sunny afternoon a couple of weeks ago myself and Steve (a friend down the road who once belonged to a bee group! further toward the hive than I me thinks!!) decided it was time to have a look inside the hive I had bought in the winter. Suitably suited up (thank God as it happens), complete with smoker and keen interest we set off. On the stroll over, Steve suggested we would have a look for the queen, check out their honey supply and generally see how things are but not to stay for more than 15 mintues, great.

We arrived, blew a little smoke across the opening before removing the roof...it quickly became apparent to me that this was not like the books I had read..."working with your bees will be peaceful and enjoyable..."meditative.." hah, thay had not counted on these girls, they were pissed, instantly!! not having stood very often by an open hive in a full suit I had little history to guage how things were..Steve however was quite quickly suggesting things were not okay, we should put this back together and go back, these bees are really aggressive to.. lets go now!....the little buggers were bouncing off the veil enragedly desperate to kill me, having got the lid back on some were still at us after a 1km of walking away...hmmm, maybe they were zenophobic?

To cut a long and sometimes painful (on the second visit..yes I have been back!?) one managed to sting me through my leather gloves...I have managed to extract (last years) honey, about 7kg left and today a lovely chap Thierrie (as in Henri) who has 450 hives called in to have a look...the prognosis being they are definitely nasty but with some manipulation of the monarchy (killing the old bag and putting in a sweet hearted beauty) we can turn things around..phew..

Inspite of all this I find the whole thing quite fascinating and am keen to build up to at least three hives by winter...honey is popular and will go well alongside my other bits and pieces on the markets...

Since finishing the roof in March we have not seen rain! Each days is in the mid 20s and apart from the obvious need of rain for the grass etc. it has been a lovely time.
Kids have just began their 2 week easter break yet love their school in Collorec so I suspect before long will go all day.

No real breakthrough, insight into the French system and so we are left with the frustrations of not knowing if we can find a way to be fully certified etc. little wonder France struggles to balance the books, I have yet to meet any French who understand their own systems (at all)...c'est bizare...

R

Lovely days

Spring has been amazingly warm and lovely so far. Lots of spring flowers and great temperature to do a lot of weeding and tidying up outside. Pony Trefine is doing great and is very sweet with the kids. With the much longer days (how did that happen so quickly?) I also have more time to do stuff with the horses.

At the moment we have my dear old friend Anita staying over. So nice after all these years to just chat (and do a little bit of weeding and walking) and have some time to catch up and to find out we have hardly changed at all. So funny my kids are now her kids age when we last saw each other, and now her oldest has already left home!

The renovations are making steady progress: The kids bedroom is all insulated and gibbed. Downstairs Rod and Simon have poored the concrete floor.

Good news: Today we saw Scooter sitting down, and standing on his leg for a few steps. Marley caught a hare today so they both had an extra special dinner to celebrate Scooter's little steps forward on the road to recovery.

Spring

Days lengthen as we pull away from what really has been a long, difficult winter...various illness, long, wet days and of course the 'silence of the lamb' episode(s)...the most curious aspect of the whole business being that the chap who shot scooter actually tried to put the rifle up his bum!? if this is not a homoerotic gesture then...(which does fit with him...yet such a punishing thing to do..rage, rage)..

Anyhow, here we are starting to sense the sun is warming, the days longer and the grey,wet mist receding...with the roof finished it is time to start the inside..yet, it is also time to attend to the gardens...onions are in, garlic up and going (from October), strawberries beginning to shoot as are the rasberries, casis and blueberries. I have planted a 50m double row of willow for coppice and whips as well as three varieties of hops as a trial. My bees have woken up so soon I shall have a look under the lid to see how they are. No glasshouse yet so I need to build some single bed cloches for this year..

Huge amount of work left to do before the second half of the house is ready but I do feel that completing the roof is a big step..sadly my back has given up for the last week so it has been enforced rest for awhile...

Watched Wales score a somewhat dubious win over Ireland, here's hoping the ABs do the business in October...

All this against the backdrop of Japan, with thousands of people presumed dead, towns wiped out and peoples lives devastated..with this in mind, life is pretty good here in rural France! lessons are back on and so the bilingual goal is still alive!!...

R

The roof is finished!

The roof is finished, spring has arrived, it's a school holiday, and Scooter is doing fairly ok. So I must say, things are good here.

Black dog day

It's been a week ago already. Both Rod and me weren't paying attention to the dogs. Too sick, too much going on. The buckle of the rope Marley was supposed to be tied on was faulty. Marley and Scooter went of for a run.

An hour later Martin came by in his car. That he'd shot the dogs because they'd killed a sheep. That the gendarmerie was there and were going to put them both down. That Scooter had a broken leg. That Marley was ok. I was in shock. Rod jumped in the car.

When he went there the maire was there but no gendarmerie. The dogs were alive in a stable. Rod endured a half hour tirade, then they had a coffee and Rod and the dogs came home.

Scooter's leg was all floppy. I took him to the vet. An x-ray showed his feamur was in bits and pieces. Another vet could operate on him the next day.

After a 4 hour surgery the vet had pieced his leg back together. When I picked him up on Saturday Scoot was a miserable little pile of dog.

I've been on the verge of tears all week, but today both Scooter and me are feeling a little bit brighter. He sleeps most of the day and lies in the sun in the afternoon. He is on loads of antibiotics and has a foot long zip on his thigh.

I'm sorry about the sheep, but I find the damage done to the dog out of proportion. Expensice too. Looking at the x-ray the dog have been shot at very close range. The guy could have grabbed him by his collar.

Everybody we know has heard about the sheep incident. It's probably the most exciting thing that has been going on for quite some time. I'm really tired. I wish my life was boring too, but it just never seems to get there.