Once upon a time, not so very long ago (about 5 months, to be exact), there was a relatively well tended potager (vegetable patch), with its neat rows of lettuces and radishes, spinach and French beans. The gardener dreamed of a time she could go out with her wicker basket and pick the produce, and of how good it would taste. Then along came the bad weed fairy, sprinkling extra-fast-growing weed seeds liberally around the potager, and the not-enough-time-to-do-everything fairy, filling the gardener’s head with plans of cleaning, cooking, tiling, painting and other non-gardening activities.

Before very long, the potager had become totally overgrown; weeds sprang up everywhere,  the tomatoes spread out like a jungle, butternut squash that must have come from seeds thrown onto the compost heap sprawled between the peppers and aubergines, the cabbages grew huge and went to seed and something ate the tops of every one of the 185 onion plants. The gardener wrung her hands but didn’t really know where to start to get it back under control.

Then along came the cavalry (who says you can’t have a cavalry in a fairy tale!?), in the form of Julia and Chris; expert gardeners, who took one look at the overgrown mess and turned very pale. Having got over their shock, they set about the renovation task, tying up tomatoes, pulling up weeds and now-dead bean plants and finding that some onions had actually grown, in spite of the lack of tops. One hard, hot morning of their ministrations, and the potager was back to looking as it should, and the gardener had learned a lot about growing veg.

The same day, the wood fairy phoned, in the form of Phillipe, the village Maire. The commune of Caupenne owns 170 hectares of woodland and every so often, they cut down some of the trees; the straight trunks of oak are sold to furniture manufacturers and barrel makers, the rest as firewood. They have recently cut a load of ash trees, to clear the way to the 170 year-old oaks, so the residents of Caupenne have been offered firewood at a good price. Our load was ready for collection and Phillipe was willing to collect and deliver  it for us with his tractor and trailer; so Nick, Kieran and Chris went off to load up and Phillipe then delivered it to our garden. All it needs now is stacking – I wonder if there’s a wood stacking fairy???