July 2007 Feeling cautious in starting a blogsite

Well... here we go... as I breathe deeply and evenly and start to publish personal thoughts about our life in France.

Today, whilst Captain Sensible is chaux plastering the newly made exterior walls for the "abri de l'hiver", the garden room that we intend to use in the winter, I learned how to trim the baby leeks and plant them in our "petit potager". It was so easy! First of all you trim the roots to about 1cm of growth and then you cut the leaves until the plants are about 20 to 25cm in length. Dib a hole about 15cm deep and drop in the leek plant. Plant the leeks about 10 to 15cm apart. Pour water in the holes and press the soil gently around them. Voila... little green leafy plants all in a row. Marvellous! So... 50 plants cost 4. 80e . Une botte de poireaux (a bunch of leeks) normally costs about 1.50e , although we cannot remember exactly how much. With some luck we might make a small saving!! However, the fun is in the fact that we have prepared the soil, broken our backs and can look forward to home grown leeks on our winter plates!

We had to dig up our Charlotte potatoes and store them. They are ready much earlier than last year's crop which perhaps were not the same variety! Many people in our locality have had potato and tomato diseases in their gardens and their crops are ruined. So we feel lucky! Our cherry tomatoes are doing well but not the other varieties which were planted later. We were lazy on account of not wishing to "garden in the rain". When Claude Debussy wrote "Jardins dans la Pluie", a pretty pianistic piece, which I used to be able to play, I am sure he never envisaged the amount of waters that France and especially England have seen this year.

Now ... I have completed my "test writing" and finished this "posting", so being courageous, I hope that achievement and success will be experienced on this new venture.