We've had a busy and a social week, meeting up with people over to see their second homes, as well as getting a bunch of stuff done ourselves. We declared Tuesday a Holiday, and once we had done the very important job of choosing a new mattress and ordering its delivery (we've had the current one for 25 years, a change is allowed!), we set out on a jaunt of frivolity.
Our first job was to find somewhere for lunch, and clearly in the tourist areas, Tuesday lunch is not a popular meal. It took us a while to find the Quatre Saisons opposite Langlois Chateau in St Hilaire/St Florent on the south bank of la Loire. It was worth the search. While the menu on the board looked delicious and may have had too many choices to make life easy, the menu du jour was cheaper and excellent. Pan fried sander fillet with salad, chicken supreme with rice and beans and a nice wine jus and the most amazing vanilla pudding that I still fantasise about. All served in a nice room overlooking the Thouet and served by the chap doing the cooking. We were very pleased.
After a brief retail therapy stop at Decathlon, we drove on to Turquant. This really is a tourist village, but again the out of season Tuesday effect meant that people were few and far between, although I can imagine it is the seventh circle of hell on a sunny Sunday in July or August. It is an arts and crafts centre, and while the gallery was nice enough, the shop set of caves were a better display of the talents around. Even so, the delicacy and chichi-ness of it all were not really to our taste, so while we could appreciate the talent, we were not tempted to put paws in pockets. Not least as there were no ants for sale - they are big on ants in Turquant!
From there, our final stop was with a friend and wine producer in Restigné to buy red and rosé wines and hear about the challenges of selling a nice little vineyard as a going concern.
Now we are trying to catch up on all the gardening work we need to do but the weather has not been helping us with. On Friday I topped out the broad beans, as there were enough small beans set to make me feel the time was right. I guess there are something over 100 plants and only one had blackfly on already, so I feel my timing was impeccable. I had some assistance with this slightly back breaking task, as Monsieur Clause supervised while squashing a number of sprouting onion sets.
Getting the potatoes in is slow work. Through all of March and the first week of April the ground was too wet to work. Then John got the cultivator out and cleared some space, but also pulled muscles nearly everywhere, so had to rest up for a couple of weeks. Yesterday he felt up to giving it another go and I was able to plant another 18 chitted potatoes. We now have half the available spuds planted, although I think we might not get them all in this year.
After some 6 weeks in place looking along a much frequented path, I brought in one of the trail cameras to see who is around. After some quick copying and editing of the SD card, it is now back out again, in a different location, with the aim of admiring boar having mud baths. Anyway, a trundle through the files reveals that we have just as many boar and deer in the zone as ever. That the badgers are still knocking around, as is the fox and a hare and a probably pine martin. It also revealed that images and videos of us walking away from the camera are beyond unflattering, and that goes for the boar and the deer too! I have deleted all evidence for us, but the animals don't have those editorial controls. Here are some of our neighbours.
The new cameras are less intrusive but still need to be checked out closely!
Have a good week!
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