Hearthstone

Last night we had a storm, nothing unusual about that in France, however this one woke us up! Thunder lightening and hail the size of golf balls was falling and I doubt if anyone in the area got much sleep.

This morning we discovered several holes in our roof and some interesting dents in the car. After examining the roof with binoculars we counted three large holes and several small ones. I managed to carry out some temporary repairs on our flat roof, the main roof will have to wait until the rain stops.

The insurance company phone is constantly engaged so we are not alone.

Our first baby pumpkin in France

Isn’t it wonderful, it is only a week old, it seems to be established and ready to grow. Several sisters are starting to appear

We planted our first pumpkins in our newly dug vegetable beds at the end of spring, since then they have grown steadily and filled their bed, they are now breaking out and exploring the rest of the garden, at some point I need to trim them and train them towards some empty space.

Our pumpkins have started to push out their female flowers, we have been pollinating, tearing off the male flowers and introducing them to the female ones, a fairly brutal procedure resulting in the male flowers being discarded. I have found out fairly recently that you can eat the flowers, what a plant!

We have had thunderstorms and heavy rain during the night, so the garden is much more relaxed and seems to be recovering. If it is fine tomorrow I hope to take a photograph of our first baby pumpkin!

No rain for weeks now, most of the plants in our gardens look tired and thirsty, time to fill the watering cans and get watering. We are lucky there is a small stream that runs through our village, most of the villagers use the stream to water their gardens. Water is expensive in France, it seems everyone is metered, for us this is great as it encourages us to look at our water use and treat water as the valuable resource it is.

I have developed a way of carrying three large plastic watering cans and a bucket in a standard galvanized wheelbarrow I support the cans by filling the barrow with water once I have the watering cans in place. To water our entire garden takes between ten and twelve visits to the stream and about an hour and a half in time.

Occasionally I am joined by freshwater crayfish that live in the stream on one occasion I had three large crayfish in my watering cans, I simple return them downstream from where we collect water. This time of year the garden needs watering every evening so I get plenty of exercise and fresh air

We are working hard at the moment to update Hearthstone, designing a new website called thetingis.com and continuing to develop our life here in France.

The weather here has finally changed from scorching heat with no rain to cloudy with no rain, our gardens and crops need rain. We are watering the majority of our crops by hand from the village stream almost every evening, it takes about an hour with loads of buckets, watering cans and lots of patience in the heat of summer in France.