A Fourth Pause in Lent 2014

Lent is coming along nicely - I have ordered my leg of Easter lamb from the butcher's!

I am also finding your Pause in Lent posts so helpful. It was Gaz's post last week that really kept me thinking.

I stopped off in our local church on Tuesday (market day) and lit candles for our family and for my father and his wife. If candles aren't from your tradition, well, neither are they from mine. But the prayer next to the candelabrum says it all, I think.

Here's my rough translation:

Lord, let this candle which I light be a beacon for you to illuminate my joy,
Let it burn so that you rekindle my heart,
Let it shine so that you burn away all my selfishness, pride and impurity.

Lord, I cannot stay long in your church.
This burning candle that I leave is part of me that I want to give to you.
Help me to prolong my prayer in my activities today.

Amen

What all came together for me (as part of Gaz's comments on sacrifice, and the prayer about leaving part of yourself for God) was the realisation that sacrifice isn't always painful. There are willing and happy sacrifices we make every day. A mother's life could be described as one long sacrifice - the needs of her children put ahead of her own. The fact that it doesn't feel like that most of the time is because it's a very happy and worthwhile sacrifice made for people we love. This year Ben has sacrificed a lot (including earnings) to study again. I have sacrificed a lot to let him go off to Lyon every week to do this, if I really think about it, but it's both gladly done and gratefully received, which really makes it all worth it. Perhaps we avoid offerning our whole lives as a sacrifice to God because we think it will lead to one long existence of strain and struggle. What if it isn't? What if the day to day sacrifices we make will just draw us closer in love, companionship and understanding?

A new rustic fence

In 2010 Ben made a lovely, rustic fence out of found wood and some wire pannels - you can see it here. Of course it wasn't going to last for ever, and with untreated wood it had more or less rotted away by last summer. He, the boys and I spent some time this winter ripping the old fence out and putting up a new one, made of treated wood salvaged from pallets!

Now that the blossom and a few bulbs are coming out, it's pretty enough to show you! Here are a few shots of the old fence when it was still looking cute, first right at the very beginning:

 

See how small our nectarine tree was then! Two and a bit years later, the fence was hosting some lovely Scottish foxgloves:

I very carefully dug up the current foxglove plants (three little ones) and replanted them once the new fence went in. I've also split and replanted the two different types of iris which were growing in places along the old fence, and Ben is planting some gladiolus corms along it in batches, so that they will hopefully flower at different times this year. I'm sure that Lululiz's morning glories have re-seeded themselves, as they always do, so that's some more wonderful colour to look forward to as our new, rustic fence settles in to the garden!



A year of fruit drying

For Christmas 2012, Ben bought the family a fruit drier. We've been eating its produce for a year and I can confidently say that it's been a good buy for pleasure and thrift - the winner was this Christmas bowl of dried fruit, bought fresh at the supermarket and then dried, all for a fraction of the cost of the pre-prepared basket:

Clockwise starting from the bottom, we have dried apple (soak the pieces in water with a little lemon juice as you chop them), coconut (a new one - fantastic!), mango (an old favourite), grapes (new to us as our own grape harvest this year was crummy, and much moister and more tasty than bought raisins) and, in the middle, pear.

Here's the machine itself - obviously you have to factor in the cost of the electricity, and we try to cut the pieces fairly small as chunks take a long, long time to dry out, but I guess we've saved a bit of money and have certainly had fun and produced healthy (ish) products from seasonal produce. Here's a list of everything I can remember Ben drying over the year:

 

From our own, or friends' gardens:

chillis (he ran the drier out on the patio for this, for which we were all grateful!)

cherries

bay leaves

 

From the shops when they were cheap:

apple

pineapple

mango

pear (which went mouldy a bit quickly, so we need to try again)

cranberries

coconut

 

For decorations:

orange, lemon and lime slices

 

Some of these have become absolute staples, particularly the dried mango, which is so much cheaper when you buy fresh fruit in season than in pre-prepared dried packs. The chillis were also really successful, as drying them in bunches hanging around the place may be decorative but really gathers dust. Have any of you tried drying fruit and veg? Do you have any more suggestions for us?

Reflection at the end of a busy week...

The rose I was given in Intermarché on Valentine's day is still looking wonderful on our table.

The new-to-us stove (once belonging to Ange) is warming the back of the house (including the room where I teach),

and the big fire at the front is necessary too - it's -1.6° outside!

The hellebores don't like the sudden cold snap.

And the violets aren't too convinced, either.

Rosie, Holly and Annabeth are just fine in the cold,

but next door to them Valkrie is sulking, mainly because her friend China the silky bantam

 

has been broody all week! Pook, pook, pook, she says...

There are daffodil buds and a muck heap in the garden - lots of work to do!

Non-essential things (like housework) have been put to one side this busy week, which started with Son 1 and me spending three days in hospital, and has continued  with normal working hours, nurses' visits and new brace-care for Son 2, who has had his own medical intervention to deal with! Ben had a migraine yesterday - everyone has taken the strain in their own way...

But we're beginning to put it back together! The boys are on holiday now, Ben is taking some muck to a friend before starting to spread it on our own garden, and I'm off to keep on with the housework catch-up! Tomorrow or Monday - my first Pause in Lent. The catch-up continues!

Animals at Christmas

It's Christmas in the garden!

The hens are thriving in their new hen run (fence designed by Ben out of old pallet wood, and constructed en famille by all four of us (but mostly by Ben...) Raja is certain that there is a hole in the fence somewhere. Her new life-project is to seek out the gap - she doesn't want to eat the hens, by the way, she wants the kitchen scraps we feed them!

Son 1 and Ben were out in the garden with the Christmas lights last weekend, and decided to include the hens in the festivities. I'll try to get a photo at night time, too.

Just as Raja tries to eat the hen's food, a goat ate my wreath! This was before it got to me - a friend who's a trained florist made it for me and left it near her back door to keep fresh. Whereupon one of her goats ate it... so I have made a reasonable job with ivy from the garden, but I do miss Amy's creation!

October has begun...

... and the work-load hasn't gone down in the slightest!

I'm not complaining - I am doing what I love (teaching a huge variety of people), in hours that suit me, often from home, which suits the boys, and getting paid for it!

However blogging, and also painting our half-completed front door, are really taking a back seat!

Just so you realise that I'm not suffering at all, I've given you three photos from our camping trip in late September, and here are five things I'm really grateful for at the moment:

• Being at home almost every morning, with Ben and the boys as they get ready and leave for school and work.
• The moon in the sky when I head outside to let the hens out each morning.
• Many warm, sunny days to dry my washing on the line.
• Pupils and students who enjoy sharing the learning experience with me.
• Chillis, peppers, grapes and a few tomatoes from the garden.

Productivity

In the garden...

In the nesting box:

At work and at play!

One thing I haven't done is organise the Thrill of What You Already Have event for the last two months - very sorry! October's should be with you very soon. Another thing I can do for you RIGHT NOW is tell you that those wandering Willows are currently sunning themselves with Quilter Liz in Australia! Do pop over and see them here, at My Blog, from this Aussie Girl. Have a great weekend, and I'll be back in early October with Thrills and more..!

Roses...

Thanks for your comments about the white roses and other garden flowers in my last post! The roses are still in their first enthusiastic burst of flowering, so we are picking them whenever they are dry enough. (Which means not today, for sure!)

This is the first year that our roses have really flowered so generously. Ben pointed out recently that we've now spent longer in this house and garden than anywhere we've ever lived before. You can see from my life story, highlighted in the sidebar, that we moved a lot before settling here in France. It's lovely to spend long enough in a home to see things really develop - the roses we planted in the first few years are now repaying us lavishly, the veg garden thrives as Ben applies the knowledge gained from previous years... There is still plenty more to do, and the wonders of photo-cropping tend to show you only the pretty bits of our house and garden, whilst the reality includes barren earth beside a long hedge in the garden and the usual heaps of family-related junk around the home. But I am actually coming to love the reality, including the functional and non-beautiful stuff, instead of hankering after something picture-perfect. How about you?

Scottish Wild Flower Mix

Four or five years ago my dad gave me some money to buy the boys a present from Scotland - along with a bit of shortbread I found them a packet of Scottish Wild Flower Seeds and well, that was a present which lasted!

We scattered them along Ben's rustic, 'dog-proof'' fence which separates Raja (in theory) from the veg garden, and one thing is sure, they've grown up so thickly each year that this is one part of the fence that she never breaks through (in her quest for cucumbers, in case you were wondering). This year the fennel is being kept company by a massive burst of foxgloves. I've even been able to transplant one little plant to the hedge in the front garden, and it seems to be happy there so far. If it manages to seed itself, we can expect another little patch of Scotland in two years' time!

We had a lovely long weekend (Pentecost gave us another holiday yesterday). How is your week going? Is it becoming steadily more red, white and blue?

The Thrill of What You Already Have - May

We've all been slightly suspicious of the azure-blue 'sea' in this month's picture of  the Clyde holiday resort, Dunoon.

Those who have been there deny that it ever looks like this:

But the inspiration is fantastic - I knew I had something with that incredible glossy blue, and it took me a while to work out what it was. That's the excitement of  this challenge, I think - the pictures trigger something, and it may take a while to work out what is lurking on shelves and in boxes... and this time it turned out to be on top of a kitchen cupboard...

It's this blue-glazed vase. I bought it from the stall-holders next to us when we had a stall at the school Vide Grenier, years ago. I got it very cheap, as they'd manage to chip the rim as they were transporting it (sound familiar?). It's been sitting on top of various kitchen cupboards ever since, because I like to keep a blue theme in the kitchen.

It's been really fun to take it off the top shelf, give it a thorough wipe, and find another home for it!

I have to admit I cheated with the Cornish-ware style bowl below it - I only bought it on Saturday at a Vide Grenier (four of them for 50c). It does look good, and reflects the architectural lines of the resort building at Donoon!

The yellow plate below it came from Leclerc (the big hypermarket) when several of our Denbyware plates broke in The Great Collapse of 2007 (it was a shelf-collapse, but deserves capitals and a place in family history). The yellow supermarket plates turned out to be woefully inadequate in terms of staying power - I really don't mind a few chips on vintage china, but I do object to new stuff chipping as soon as you use it. Give me modern Denby-quality or vintage toughness any day!

The flowers are from the garden - the large blue ones are new this year, and the others are staples of Ben's 'flower meadow' area - I pick them (and love them) every year!

Let me know when you do your 'Thrill' posts and I'll link to them in my sidebar - I'm looking forward to them!

A Handmade Life 4

On Sundays we occasionally relax our lunchtime routine - we like to eat together as a family at weekends, but sometimes, if church has been too intense for our privacy-loving Son 1, or too staid for our activity-loving Son 2, everyone needs a bit of time to themselves before returning to the bosom of the family, as it were...On those occasions we set up the table with bread, cheese etc, give the boys a plastic plate each, and let them load up and go and eat wherever they want. This time, they didn't spread out very far...Son 1 bagged the Cath Kidston picnic rug, and started doing some homework while he munched.Son 2 got the shelter out of the shed, and set it up next to the black watch tartan blanket. He got out his Lego Creationary game and sorted the pieces before he ate.By this point there was some smoke in the air, affecting the photos and causing me to make a run for my dry washing - Serge next door had lit a bonfire, and the effects show in our photos!Ben's away in the UK, visiting his parents for the weekend before working with some British clients this week.So I sat at the table in the middle, listened to Spanish poem recitals, admired Lego creations, and sipped tea whilst reading Homes and Antiques. A very pleasant, if unconventional, lunch!

My Thrill of What You Already Have post is below - please do scroll down and have a look at what I've done with the beautiful colours of the railway poster.

A week of snow in the south of France

Well, how unexpected! It's snowed here at some point over each of the last few winters, and winter 2010 was pretty heavy... but in general, snow is not much seen down here.

What's unexpected this time is that the snow not only fell...

... but it lasted!

Finally, we have a lot of birds visiting our feeders.

If Eeyore really lived in that little hut (above right), he'd have reason to be miserable. In fact, it houses the pool filtering equipment. But I like to imagine Eeyore there.

Look away now if you don't like mice!

I'm perfectly happy if they stay outside, but I'm afraid some of this one's relatives strayed indoors and tried to steal our Christmas chocolates. They Are No More...

When the snow started falling, over a week ago now, Son 1 was excited enough to get a wellie boot on one foot and a trainer on the other, and wrap up warm enough to shuffle around the garden on his crutches. Raja followed, doggedly.

Now we're at the stage where a thin layer of snow or, worse, ice has sat over everything for about a week. Crutches are out of the question, so Son 1 is stuck back indoors and, when I'm not working, we're playing endless but enjoyable games of Carcassone. At the moment, I'm winning the latest round...Don't forget to enter my giveaway in the post below, to win four little collections of French vintage goodies!