It's a Coffee-Coloured Life

Coffee and white are flavour of the month here.  Roy has been painting his way through Covid in order to stay busy now that winter is upon us and he can't get out in the garden.  So he started by painting the hall.  First, the ceiling and beams - white, of course, and then everything else.  It was a rather dark space originally, as it has no natural light coming in other than the two fanlights over the front and back doors. It looked like this when we first moved in...

...and, although it is nothing like that tidy now, it is much brighter...

... and you are looking from the opposite end in this one, which I took when he was just in the middle of painting the doors.  Now he has finished the end doors and some of the other

ones, like this one, in a pretty coffee colour that I think looks rather lovely. (the mirrors were already on the doors when we bought the house)...

He also painted the stairs railing (is the whole thing called a banister?) in the same colour but added a packet of sparkly paillettes to the paint (they were supplied with it) so the banister sparkles like something from Disney Kingdom.

The drawback to painting doors in the winter is that the door has to be open for a certain amount of time, and today was not a good day for this.  The temperature did not rise above freezing all day and the bushes and trees in the garden - and even the little clumps of grass - were all covered in ice where the rain had frozen as it touched them!

Fairylike maybe, but devilish cold!

Making of an Angel

 I don't like winter at the best of times and this year is pretty bad. The weather is cold (though we're not expecting snow) and I have had a cold too.  Do the two things go together?  I have revised my opinion that colds are caught from other people as I haven't been in contact with anyone without wearing a mask, and then only briefly in passing, in front of supermarket shelves. So now I think maybe the cat brought the cold virus in. However I caught it, it is going away only VERY slowly!

My main problem though, is sleeplessness. I just can't get off to sleep easily, and when I finally manage it, I sleep for an hour or two and then wake up wide awake.  Last night I went downstairs at 1 o'clock, made toast and a cup of tea, and came back to bed at 4 am. That is a common pattern. Any advice on how to conquer this would be welcome!

My arm, which I broke in February, is still not perfect, so I can't do a lot of things still. This means that I fill my time largely with knitting and crochet, which I know is not expending much energy, but, together with some cooking, is about all I can do. I don't have a large stock of yarn any more, so it's difficult to find something to make, but I did manage to crochet an angel recently, but I forget who wrote the pattern. It was on her blog and I copied and pasted it. I did promise her a picture of my finished angel...

... which is not really as pretty as the one on her pattern...

So, a heartfelt apology, to you, the designer of my (rather scruffy) angel.

Lightening the Load

 

Today at 14:54

There are lots of things to be done in this new house and, because I broke my arm last February, I can do very little still and Roy has to do it all.

But he has coped wonderfully and recently he put up a light fitting in a spare bedroom - a beautiful art nouveau light fitting which, unfortunately had no lampshdes.

Serendipitously I found the perfect glass shades in our local charity shop yesterday and today he fitted them on the light.

The shades are really beautiful close up...

One more advance in the decorating stakes...

TIMBER!!!!!

So, today Vienne Tree Services came to cut down four trees.  Three massive pines, planted in a small group and a tall deodar cedar, full of procession caterpillar nests!  These four trees were about 30 years old (we counted the rings) and overshadowed a large part of the garden.

Now the area is much lighter and we hope that grass will grow instead of the weeds and moss that proliferated in the shade...

It took all day to cut them down, but the guys cleared up all their mess and all we have to do now is wait for the man who is having the wood to come and collect it.

 I hope he does that soon, as the garden is full of tree trunks now!

Tulips are Blooming in Sainte-Soline...

Last autumn I bought some tulip bulbs from Farmer Gracy. 50 bulbs of Orange Princess. Now the first one is up and flowering..

...only 49 left to go!

They are all planted round the lime tree, which is a central feature of the old orchard...

I was hoping they would all come out together and make a lovely show... but there are still 49 left, so hopefully there will be more coming out very soon.  I'll take more pictures...

The dead tree you can see at the back of the picture was like that when we bought the house last year, and there were some old fruit trees that were dead too, so we had quite a bit of wood around. As we are currently in lockdown because of the COVID19 virus, we can't take anything to the tip (not essential business) so we asked for a permit for a bonfire (don't worry, we didn't burn the old cherry tree - that is promised to a wood turner).  Yesterday was a beautiful sunny day with no wind, so Roy had a lovely time with a bonfire...

Pluvio-neigeuse...

Yes, a little snow and rain together here this morning. My (weather forecasting app tells me that this kind of weather is called 'pluvio-neigeuse'. I learn something new every day😊

And there's a bit of a chilly wind too.

So much for 'In like a lion and out like a lamb' !

Gardening Leave

With the whole world (virtually) on lockdown, I'm guessing many people will be doing their gardens, and it's just the right time of year for us here to make a start on the potager.  So far we've planted potatoes...

...added a row of raspberry canes...

...and planted some runner bean seeds to grow up an obelisk.

Even the cat helped by smoothing out the soil...