The sky we awoke to this morning!

We’ve been duped! For years we’ve been led to understand that the French don’t do Christmas like we Brits; all the commercial stuff, that is. But you wouldn’t believe that if you’d been in the supermarket today! Trees, cards, baubles, toys, santas -bah, humbug!!! I suppose it is December 1st though, so they can be forgiven:-)

On the way home, there was great excitement at the sighting of a second hand mini digger which was for sale, at the roadside. We spent an hour learning about the finer details of how it works, what shovel sizes are included, etc., before coming home to consider whether or not to invest. At 7,000euros, it seems quite pricey to me, but what do I know? Any experts out there?

For the last month, the markets and garden centres have been packed with trees and shrubs of every description (well, except Christmas trees); it’s the planting season. So today Nick and Kieran went to a local riding school and came back with a trailerful of manure. We then set to, to plant some of the things we’ve bought recently; a blackcurrant, a redcurrant and a pomegranate tree. So next year we might have home-grown pomegranates at Christmas!

The workshop is looking more like a workshop by the day now, and today Kieran was given the task of attaching the chimney to the little wood burning stove and venting it. Once that was in place he could light the fire and start to brew coffee, so he was a happy bunny.