Not a lot, I regret to say. I spent a few days in there when we first arrived back in March, and put up all the beautiful cards, collages, gifts etc from my bloggy friends. They always travel with me between the UK and France. Got all my craft bits organised in the little cupboards and on the shelves, and then the neverending rain put a stop to my visits. It wasn't until sometime in May that I braved the elements to put some ephemera, lace and button packs together for a charity, and also made another little domino book -
Ephemera packs -
lace packs -
button packs -
Now that the weather is much improved and summer is finally making an appearance, I am planning to find some time to get some crafting done. I need to do something with these beautiful things found in my little greenhouse -
Toodlepip xxx
When even my darling husband tells me off for not having blogged for over month, then I know I have to do something about it. So here we go, catch up post, Spring in France and maybe hopefully almost Summer!
I don't think we have ever had such a wet Spring in the 13 years we have had the cottage. Yes, we have had floods in the village below us once or twice over the years, but this year the river has broken its banks at least three times this Spring -
It was cold and wet for so long, we couldn't do anything in our vegetable garden. My DH bought me a little greenhouse so that I could at least start some seeds off, and that worked well, it was such a pleasure to see little plantlets appearing. I kept them in the greenhouse as long as I could, but eventually they had to be planted out. We had the odd dry and sunny day, and we planted out what we could. We bought tomato plants, kept them in the greenhouse for a while and during a rare spell without rain, planted them out. Oh woe, the ground was still so wet, and after a couple of days it starting raining again, and all the tomato plants died a horrible death. The other veggie plants clung on, and survived, but nothing grew. Nothing except the grass and the weeds of course. And we never had a long enough dry spell to cut the grass, and the longer it grew, the more impossible it got. I didn't even want to go to my craftavan, as it meant braving horribly wet grass as tall as me almost, to get there. And my muse had gone and got herself drowned anyway, so what was the point?
There were a few bright spots though. The wisteria flowered -
and so did the old roses -
the blossoms all got mushed by the rain of course, but at least for a few days we had beautiful roses.
I bought potted plants to add some colour to the garden -
and that cheered me up a bit. I think all the rain really got me down though, seeing our veggie garden in such a terrible state was depressing. I just wanted to curl up with my doggies and a book and forget about the world.
But I don't want to end this first post after such a long break on such a sad note, the good news is, summer has finally arrived we think :-). We are having a few lovely dry and sunny days and the veggies in the garden are finally growing, yay. And.......... my wonderful husband has bought me some new tomato plants, so hopefully I won't be without toms straight from garden this summer.
Got lots lots more to tell you all, of course, especially about the wonderful doggies at the shelter where we help out a couple of times a week. I will tell my DH to remind me every couple of days to blog :-)! Bedtime for me now though, lol, can't handle late nights these days.
Toodlepip xxx
