Bottling.

We went over to R and S's today to help with the bottling. I had no idea what it involved but found it astonishing. A man-and-his-bottling-van turned up and plugged himself in and bottles were loaded at one end, filled, corked and spat out the other end where we loaded them into crates.

I have sausage fingers and bruises between my first and second fingers of each hand but between 8 of us we loaded 10,000 bottles before lunchtime with just a couple of breakages.

P and I then came back, after a very lovely lunch in the sunshine, and finished winding up our wires in the parcel we are arraching this year.

I'm knackered and my hands are protesting. A lovely day though. 

Running

We're just back from Barcelona, where P ran and completed his first marathon. So proud of him, he trained so hard and did so well.

An almost-week with J and T.

Our lovely friends J and T came to visit at the end of their 5 week tour round places like Morocco and Marrakech by camper van. They are some of my favourite visitors and I've had such a lovely time.

We did good productive things like sorting out a fallen tree and having a monster bonfire to burn up all the vine roots from the last lot of arraching.

We also did less productive, but fun, things like digging up some clay from our land (its mostly all clay!) and making some "pots" or in P's case a small head of a man. We then tried "firing" them in the huge fire we'd built to burn the roots. We also tried to glaze them with glass in said fire but that was much less successful. Somehow J also persuaded me to go for a swim in our own lake. Whilst not cold it was altogether too squashy underfoot but has made me consider more research into converting one of the lakes into a natural swimming pool.

We cooked over our fire again (this time indoors as it is currently a bit cold) but this time in the lovely tagine brought fresh from Tagire by J and T. It was delicious and so easy to do.  P and I are planning another one soon.

I love these sort of weeks and love J and T's enthusiasm for everything. I hope they come back soon.

Gite work.

Well, it's progressing, albeit slowly. We're spending days planing and sanding the beams to get rid of finger marks and cement stains. Dreary and dusty is mostly what it is but I think it'll look good when it's done.

Pruning and general crossness.

Well the regular, electric secateurs, pruning is done! Also the "tailler a mort"(which is an expression I approve of, it does what it says on the tin) pruning of the bit we are pulling out this year.

I'm feeling antsy this morning due largely to having to call Agri-Mer in an effort to find out if we can go and get the paperwork we need in order to start this years round of jumping through hoops. This makes me cross before the day is even begun and consequently anyone who comes across me shortly after gets the short end of the stick and I feel I need to apologise! Sorry T!

I plan to spend the afternoon planing and sanding my frustration away! Then I might start mullering my back with a spot of weeding! I've got my dungarees on specially.

And breathe.

"Only one this year.'"

I know I've been more than a bit slack with the blog this year and my lovely Mother-in-law informed me yesterday that there has been only one post this year. Morning L!

What has happened since the last post?

Well the main pruning has been plodding along, aided by a succession of audio-books. The Bell by Iris Murdoch being particularly good. I now have the new vines from last year to do, all of which are at ankle height and my back is protesting at the thought. Also we are pulling out another bit of dodgy-old-vine so that needs to be given its complete haircut. I have to confess at my heart sinking at the prospect of going through last years' palaver all over again. The palaver has already commenced at step one with the fact our CVI is again wrong and we've had one wasted trip to the Duanes already. Sigh.

We've ordered our new piquets for the new plantations which means quite soon we'll be spending our time banging in 1650 new posts into the ground.... more protestations from my back.

The new plantations are giving us a quandary as well with regard to weed-killer. Hmm to weed-killer or not to weed-killer, that is indeed the question. Weedkillering is expensive, requires over 7000 plastic sleeves at further cost and is obviously nasty stuff. On the plus side it does make it all look lovely and it means we don't have to WEED, which is what will need to happen if we don't weedkiller. It's cheaper and altogether more environmentally friendly but again with my back.

Either way we need to make a decision and soon.

I have been mixing the boredom of pruning with the pleasing tasks of re-affixing wires to posts with d-rings and tightening said wires to stop them being all baggy. Madame reliably informs me that my husband should be doing the later, as it's, not a job for women!

The weather is trying to break into spring with the flowers out and sunny days but it's still inclined to be  damned (the french word for which, is vachement, and yes it does relate to cows, quite how is anyones guess) cold in the mornings. We could really do without a repeat of last years frost in April.

Oh and we've been skiing.