It is hot hot hot!

Most of you will know that we spend most of Spring and Summer at our cottage in France in the deepest Burgundy countryside, on our little hill top overlooking the valley with the village we belong to. It is idyllic, peaceful, stunningly beautiful, but living so far away from 'civilisation' can have its drawbacks. We haven't had any rain for a very long time now, temps are in the very high 30Cs, and in order to keep the veggies growing, we need to water them every day. Because we are so far away from the village and on top of a hill, we don't get mains water to our cottage, we are solely dependant on our well, which is only fed by rain water filtering through the ground. So you can imagine that water is a precious resource up here. We are careful about using water and in order to save what little water there is in the well, we needed to find another supply somewhere.

So, at the recent annual village barbecue organised by the mayor, we asked him whether we could take water from the river ( which is very low ), and he said of course we could, but we could also take water from the old 'lavoire' half way up the hill, where in the olden days the women used to do their laundry. This lavoire was connected to a proper underground water supply and as getting water from the river proved rather difficult due to the steep banks, the old lavoire became our daily source of water. Twice a day, early morning and evening, my DH drives down to the lavoire, fills 40 5ltr bottles with water and I water the veggies and pot plants when he gets back -

The water is so clean and clear -

Got to be careful when filling the bottles though, lol, one could easily scoop up one of the GOLDFISH somebody has put in the lavoire! They were rather miffed at us for disturbing them and hid under the fallen leaves most of the time. I just managed to get a couple of glimpses of them ( you have to look very carefully, lol ) -

It is all so worth it though, because we have an abundance of gorgeous vegetables, which we happily share with neighbours and friends. Every day we eat nature's gifts from the garden. Perhaps lettuce and cucumber, or green and yellow courgettes, green beans, rainbow beetroot, cavolo nero and lovely new potatoes. Tomatoes aren't ready yet though.

I haven't spent much time in the craftavan, because it is like an oven in there, but I did make a couple of tags for Tag Tuesday, last week and this week. Last week's theme was FACES -

This week's theme is FRIENDSHIP -

I picked these two life long friends for my tag, just think of the stories they could tell! I added the clock for all the many hours the spent together, the bingo card for all the evenings they went out together and had so much fun, the measuring tape for all the crafts they enjoyed together, and the emergency ticket for all the times they got into trouble when they went on wickedly naughty adventures.

Have fun wherever you are. Toodlepip xxx