‘The season’ is under way

The first guests are in, and the weather on this Ascension holiday  is as good as they (and we) could hope for.

The last week has been an especially manic one.  The sink has been re-sealed, the cooker de-rusted, spiders and mice removed, bedlinen re-washed after being in storage all winter.  There has also been more painting, cementing and gardening, plus a massive packing away of books and other stuff that we  won’t see again till the autumn.

Two new pieces of kit have just come into service: a portable air conditioning unit, for summer nights when the upstairs rooms are too hot to sleep in …

…. and an extremely nifty pop-up awning for the van.  Another  lesson learned from summer 2016: if the campsite has no shade, you need to bring your own.

Although there was limitedtime for wildlife watching, it became a lot more comfortable after I graduated from a tree-branch to a hammock …

(There wasn’t much to see, but the birdsong was great.)

Nature can be cruel …

After the excitement of seeing a pair of tree-creepers frantically busy round the garage,  the next day there was no activity at all,  the nest  apparently abandoned.  We thought at first that the baby birds might  have fledged, but suspect the real explanation is darker.  In an unseasonably hot spell, placing your nest behind a sheet of corrugated iron (instead of the usual  flap of tree bark) would be like putting it in the oven …

Rush hour!

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Spring blitz

‘Blitz’ rather than ‘clean’, because – as confessed before – the Jones household isn’t big on regular cleaning, at least the serious back-of-the-cupboard,  cobwebs-in-corners sort. Until, that is, guests are expected.

So now, with our first booking imminent – a party consisting of two young couples, a baby and a dog –  we are again super busy.  Tasks include:

• Freshening up the paint on all interior walls, including  the brown splat where a hornet was swatted last summer.
• Re-cementing the edge of the terrace to reduce the chance of toddlers or drunken adults falling over it.
• Mowing the winding  ‘Enid Blyton path’ down to the stream.

• Redoubling efforts to discourage mulots (fieldmice)  from entering the house. A forlorn hope, but perhaps as outdoors becomes warmer and the foraging richer, they will be less tempted to come in.
• Packing away our personal possessions, books, kitchen stuff etc etc.
• Ditto  personal pictures.  Out go the graduation pics,  the photo collages, Ben’s ink-in-water swirls, my mosaic salamander, Helen’s papercut sunset and the plaster cast of her hand; in come Trefor’s much admired watercolours.  The  Mark Dewhurst plank-painting is, of course,  a permanent installation.

• Getting the all-important extractor fan fixed – that job required a professional, and very good he was too.

I also did some rather unpleasant maintenance work on the septic tank, but will spare you the details.

Wildlife notes: a pair of tree-creepers is nesting under the satellite dish on the garage.  Online research suggests this species like to build nests behind loose flaps of bark on trees, so we are privileged to have them.

Business matters: this year, for the first time, we are declaring all income through the French system.  Although the amounts involved are pretty small, we think we’ll end up paying more tax than  in the UK.  I suppose this is putting my socialist principles into practice, and therefore a Good Thing …

I am dipping a toe into online selling, by listing some of my sea-glass pieces on Etsy, which specialises in art, craft and various handmade products.    To check out my online shop,  search for Etsy  BretonSeaGlass (case sensitive).

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Marine matters

That’s not a reference to a certain presidential candidate, but to much nicer things: beaches and sea-glass.

The scheme to ‘upcycle’  wedding decorations into mobiles for guests to take away  was well received …

… so it was time to find some more materials, preferably in new and attractive places.  We were already planning to visit the standing stones at Carnac,

but only realised later that Carnac is  by the sea.  (Specifically, on the southern coast of Brittany – a popular tourist area, and extremely busy in peak season, but pleasantly uncrowded at this time of year.)

The Carnac beaches turned out to be disappointing from a sea-glass point of view, but at least there were plenty of birds: sandpipers, sand martins, swallows and cormorants.  (This egret was inspired by a convenient pyramid to pose as a sacred ibis.)

We found a very fine spot for lunch too.

A few miles away, the cote sauvage of the Quiberon peninsula with its crashing Atlantic surf yielded some good  pieces, with the classic frosted look needed for jewellery making.

Getting ready for The Season

Having no bookings till mid-June is a mixed blessing.  It means less income, but also more time to do the stuff that  needs to be done – like pointing, freshening paintwork, cutting firewood, gardening etc etc.

Eric sanding down the wooden shutters

The garden is getting off to a slow start.  Like the grape harvest elsewhere, it has suffered from unusual weather conditions.   There was barely a drop of rain for the entire month we were in England, and then a few frosty nights  –  some delicate bedding plants were killed off altogether, the  beautiful red acer dropped all its leaves in protest, and the walnut tree’s first leaves are looking rather shrivelled.

BUT there’s no sign of moles!!

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