this weather is crazy

This photo was taken an hour ago - the apple tree behind the house is coming into blossom. The weather has been so warm and sunny this october that the whole garden thinks it's spring. The trouble is, of course, that now we won't get many apples from this tree next year. And it produces such good cooking apples! As well as this, the grass continues to grow quite fast and we have to cut it fairly regularly still and the trees have barely started to change colour.

Winter seems to start later and later each year, and spring earlier and earlier - makes for a short winter but lots of the plants can't cope with such sudden changes.

more plans for the future

We are going to put a porch onto the back of the house. The photos are a 'before' and 'after' that we are using for the Declaration de Travaux (planning application). We will use stone that we have available from various building projects for the low walls, and the biggest bits of green oak we can afford for the posts. It will only need single glazing, but will give us somewhere to store firewood, grow plants and keep muddy boots. It will also help to keep the back of the house warm when the winter north winds blow! There will, of course, have to be a cat-flap in the door. Hope the planners don't notice!

The pantry is nearly finished

We have been trying to get the pantry finished this autumn. It was the last bit of the house that had no insulation, so the wind whistled in under the eaves in winter and straight into the rest of the house.



The above photos show the start of the process. You can see the new ceiling, hiding 200mm of insulation. We have put in a big slate shelf to the left of the door as you go in. The slate was lying around in the garden when we moved in. The walls are ready to be rendered.


This photo above shows the rendered walls, the slate shelves and the newly installed wine rack - not full yet!


The 'boat' shape is the old chimney space. We have dry-lined it, and have converted the original tatty wooden shelves into a smart cupboard (painted white). One day we will add doors to this, with a mesh to allow air but not mice to circulate.


The wall against the house now has the last of the teak we rescued from Salford Uni chemistry labs as a wide shelf right across it, with the freezer underneath, plus storage space and the gas bottles. Doors will need to be made for these bits too some time in the distant future....


The middle shelf contains 4 x 70cl bocals and 4 x 1.5 litre bocals of sloe gin in the making. Gin over here is ridiculously cheap - about 9 euros a litre, but I got some funny looks when I bought enough for this lot the other day - ah! les anglais! Said sloe gin should be just about drinkable around New Year. Won't keep long though....

lots of stuff...

This photo of the back garden is from the roof of the side barn. Having had the roof re-done, we had a series of leaks where it butted against the side wall of the house. We had to do something about it this summer, hence the photo opportunity. This little courtyard is quite an improvement on the old piggery that was there when we bought the house.

We eventually found a home for Ma's last two kittens. The grey one, that we called Tarzan (picture above) and the black fluffy one we called Teddy both went to a lady a few miles north of us, who's cat had recently died.


These photos show a 'before' and 'after' the big conifers on our boundary were cut down recently. We now have lots more light, and when the sun decides to show its face again, we will get sunlight across the back garden in the morning again. They had to be chopped anyway, as they were too close to the overhead power lines to next door. During the felling process, they knocked the lines with a branch, and they got hooked together, one over the other. All the electricity to the hamlet immediately went off, and EDF had to be called in to sort it out. Evidently it is a common enough occurrence, as they had a special insulated stick for unhooking lines...

What a week.

My best friend in France, Anne Waterson, died last thursday night.

She had breast cancer, but only found out about it after the secondary tumor in her cervical spine was diagnosed. She has had a terrible summer, with surgery and chemotherapy but I dont think she ever complained more than to regret missing the nice weather.

She died unexpectedly, at home - her heart just packed up with the strain of the treatment. It was very quick, and she and her husband, John, were spared the nightmare of a long, drawn-out final illness. But it has been such a shock to us all. John is devastated, of course.

Ann & were planning a trip to Guingamp next week to get her a wig - that would have been a retail therapy trip with a tale to tell! It still makes me smile to think about it - should she get a dolly parton beehive? a punk crest? blonde or redhead? We had fun just discussing it. In fact thinking back over my all-too-brief friendship with Ann, joking, smiling & laughing are part the overwhelming majority of my memories. That is something to hold on to.

So it has not been the best of weeks. One to get through.

Building work moves on apace

We are getting on steadily with the building work in the barn and over the shop. We have now put in all the roof windows (9 in all, see pictures below) and finished tiling the capuchine, which used to be the door from the first floor.

Inside we have finished the staircase, laid the pine floor over the barn area and started to mark out the rooms/shower rooms. We still have to treat all the wood beams before we put up the insulation and lambris (tongue & groove). I am just about to go out to buy a new pulverisateur to use for spraying the beams as the old one is clapped out.

The staircase was a bit of a challenge, as we originally planned a spiral-type, home-built affair. However, we realised that it would take far too long to make, so we bought one 'off-the-shelf' and had to cut in in half to get it to fit. The vertical beam is designed to look as if we built the stairs round it - in fact we put it in after the stairs. It will reach from the downstairs floor up into the lambris of the upstairs ceiling.

The next two photos show the upstairs as of today - the first over the shop and the second over the barn. What a difference the roof lights make!


The gap that used to be a door is now a window from outside (see 1st photo) but will look like a door from the inside. This is an old door we took out of the house, and it will form a faux door with the necessary translucide window overlooking next-door's property.

The cat that has read but is now sleeping

Isn't this lovely? One of our regular customers gave it to us yesterday. He had seen it in a shop and immediately thought of us - the cat that sleeps having read the book.

We have had some lovely comments from customers recently, including:
'Le chat qui lit, le félin le plus rapide de l'Ouest' (the fastest cat in the west) after we had posted a book out in double-quick time.

Courtyard garden is taking shape

Here are three photos of our courtyard garden. The poppies and sweet peas are filling it out beautifully.
The photo below shows the amazing purple 'paeonyflora' poppies that I got in the cottage garden society seed distribution this year. The climber is a clematis.
The last photo shows the whole bed alongside the workshop. It will be lovely when the arches are covered - hopefully by next year some of the climbers I have planted will be up that high.

chickens kittens & sheep

One of the hens has gone broody. You can (just) see her inside the broody coop, above. We are calling her Mrs Peck, as that is what you get if you put a hand anywhere near. With luck we will have chicks at the start of August.

The sheep have started a routine of galloping down for their evening bite of food....

Eating the food as quick as possible, with maximum argy-bargy and searching in each bowl for the most food.. Then retreating back up to the main field, a bit more slowly than they came down.

Ma has decided to let us see her latest litter. There are 4 kittens, one black, one grey and two tabbys. One tabby is pale and smoky colour and one has very clear markings. They all seem to have blue eyes. They are 7 weeks old and Ma is starting to get a bit fed up with them. We think we have homes for 2, but if anyone wants one - let me know.

Here are the boldest two, the grey and black kittens, with the smallest of them all (the tabby) below.

some pictues of the garden..

We have been developing the garden since we bought the house in 2000. Most planting has happened in the last three years, although we got a lot of trees put in early on.
The front garden was one of the first bits to be done - Pete had to double-dig Breton style, using a pneumatic road drill to break up the concrete/bitumen covering and then to break up the underlayer of compacted stone. Yvon, our farmer neigbour moved the very large stones into place for us, using his Manitou and we then completed the surrounds in smaller stone. Then we barrowed 10 cubic metres of soil into the parterres.

The paths are of crushed slate 'quarry bottoms' to replace the gravel we used originally. The slate picks up the colours and materials of the house, as well as toning beautifully with the predominantly blue of the flowers planted here.

This photo shows the small area behind the house. This was a mire, full of inidentified rubbish and muck, and had grown a lush crop of nettles by the time we got round to doing something with it. This area faces north west and catches the evening sun - a great place to relax and finish a bottle of wine in the evening.....

The courtyard is still being built. This is the site of an old piggery/chicken shack, which had a broken concrete base. The crushed slate hides this beautifully, and the metal arches, made with reinforcing rod will soon be covered with roses, wisteria, clematis, passion flower and jasmine. We are planning a pair of ponds made from old baths, surrounded by stone walls & fed by a trickle of water that we have piped in from the local 'source' or spring.

This corner is where the ditch from the source is culverted across the rest of the property. however, the ditch is now running dry most years, and the damp loving plants I have put in may not appreciate getting dry roots over the summer.

This photo shows the filter bed, which was originally grassed-over. The grass suffers in summer, so I have killed it off and am covering it in gravel. I will be planting things that revel in the heat & dry, such as thrift, euphorbia, verbena & grasses. The area to the left of the filter bed has receently been rotovated & seeded.

There is lots to do yet, but the garden is starting to fill out.

Time for more animals. Sheep next.

We started with three sheep, last May. Of these we still have Dolly and Baa Baa. Ali (son of Baa Baa) made a delicious Christmas dinner....
We then aquired two more ewes, Joey and her lamb, Rosie.
Joey had a lovely black ram lamb in March, but unfortunately she and the lamb were killed by a local dog. The pictures below are of the three remaining ewes and their lambs.

This picture is of Rosie with Pipin, who was born under an apple tree. You will see how much he has grown in a later picture.

This is Baa Baa, our wild-woman Ouessant ewe, with little Dot.

Finally, Dolly with Cyril and Pipin in the background.

We are getting two more lambs, one black ewe-lamb who will be called tina, and a black ram-lamb as yet un named. At the rate the grass is growing we will need them all to keep the field down this summer.

Next post - the chickens. Can you bear to wait?

I have been meaning to get around to doing a blog for a while...

Ok, here we go.


I live, with my husband, Peter, in the centre of Brittany. Pempoulrot is just about in the back of beyond. We moved here almost exactly three years ago. We are still renovating the house and developing the garden. We are also renovating the stone barn next to the house to give us accomodation for residential courses (staring later in 2007 we hope).

We run a bookshop - le Chat qui lit, although most of our sales are now of French books on the internet.

We have numerous animals. Four cats who come live in the house (there are others who don't come in). Pixel is the oldest, and came with us from England. He enjoys the sunshine in the summer and the woodburning stove in the winter.

Milly is the other cat we brought over from the UK. She just revels in the space and wildlife (mainly for hunting).

She likes to pose for the camera.

Hugh (Fearnly-Whittingstall) and Monty (Don - the garden cats) were just kittens when we moved here. Their mother (called Ma) is black and we have never been able to get near enough to her to touch her.

Hugh quickly realised that life as a house cat was infinately preferable to that of garden cat. Monty has only just got the hang of the catflap and stays outside most of the time. This picture is of Hugh.

The latest addition to the cat menagerie is Rupert. Another one of Ma's kittens, she presented him to us (more along the lines of 'please, take this off my paws, I've had enough') when he was about 10 weeks old.

He is another blue-eyed beauty. He likes playing with the grass in the front garden.

Watch this space for the sheep and lambs next!