Au Revoir Arsehole Corner!

 

 

Hello everyone,

It’s been hectic here, and now we’re in the middle of a heatwave so it’s just mostly hot and hectic.

Since Dad and the boys went back to England we’ve been beavering away at multiple jobs, we also had our good friend Christine and her children arrive for their first visit. A welcome break in the constant toil!

When I left you in the previous blog Simon had his agricultural mechanic’s hat on and he was busy pimping the tractor, new lights (LED!), a shiny new bucket on the derriere and a coat of red paint, Klaus is looking good!

The next project on the agenda was to build a set of steps into the utility and boiler room.

Here are the plans, drawn by Simon’s fair hands.

But before construction could start, we needed to repair the wall behind it.

In this area of France, the houses are built of Creusois granite stones (I may have mentioned this before, forgive my rambling, it’s the heat). Anyway, they are built with lime mortar and not cement. Unfortunately, at some point in our house’s history someone had tried their hands at pointing up the gaps, with cement, which is the devil’s mixture. The granite sucks in the cement and it becomes an almost integral part of the stone, apart from it not being the right material to use, it looks ugly and grey against the stones.

A small example, it was bloody everywhere! And you can’t chisel it off…

So, armed with a diamond cutting disc and determination Simon set about cutting out all the cement in the stonework.

I had the exceptionally important and highly skilled job of wearing a backpack sprayer and keeping the diamond disc cool and damping down the dust bowl that was emanating from the grinder.

Who you gonna call….

Simon then set about re-pointing the stonework with the lime mortar it needs, whilst wearing his stonemason’s hat of course.

Here’s a before and after picture, which shows it off brilliantly.

Next job was to bring Simon’s drawings to life and build the steps.

A lick of our special diesel and old engine oil mixture and voila!

Meanwhile, I’d been painting the utility room ready for tiling and the floor to be laid.

Friday heralded the arrival of Christine, Phoebe and Freddy! Great news, we could have a rest!

We had a fantastic time, the discovery of a very nice red wine for only 1.86 € was an added bonus, a few tipsy evenings and days out were brilliant, just what we needed.

We bade a fond farewell to our guests a week later and prepared to get back to the hard slog.

But I will distract you momentarily with the wonders of the garden!

Essentially, everything has gone bonkers! The last time I spoke to you, all I had harvested was a few radishes and a solitary runner bean, well, Mother Nature has been busy at work and we are now eating veggies at every meal. There also seems to be an influx of wind from somewhere…

I’ve also got a pesky little critter eating all the leaves on my potatoes. They go by the name of the Colorado Beetle, here’s a photofit of some of the little blighters.

They are native to North America but have managed to invade Europe, apparently, they first started to be seen in American military bases during WW1. In the 1950s they were known as the Yankee Beetle as it was claimed that the beetles were dropped by American planes. During the Cold War, some countries in the Warsaw Pact claimed that the beetles had been introduced by the CIA in an attempt to reduce food security by destroying the agriculture of the Soviet Union. A widespread campaign was launched against the beetles; posters were put up and school children were mobilised to gather the pests and kill them in benzene or petrol.

Espionage!

Anyway, I thought I had better dig up the taters in case it was affecting them, they weren’t going to grow anymore without leaves.

Four rows later and we have these…

Chips, mash, hash browns, roasties and boiled for tea then!

The onions are also readying themselves for more plaiting…

Still growing, relentlessly bigger are the marrows and pumpkins. I’m secretly hoping for a Hagrid-type pumpkin patch!

Halloween will be good this year!

My final garden gloat is….drum roll please…..two types of melon!!

These two plants have seriously been through the mill, the hail storm absolutely decimated them and they only had one leaf left each. I nearly pulled them up a couple of times because I didn’t think they would survive, but they have prevailed, flowered and now fruited!

And some people told me that melon was hard to grow! Pffft!

So, you may have be wondering about the title of today’s blog? As you know, arsehole corner resides at the bottom of the garden and that’s where we have been putting all the grass cuttings, tree pruning’s and any other garden waste we have accumulated.

When we bought the house, this was, or so we assumed, was what the previous owner had also been doing.

Where we ever wrong!

With the help of handy Klaus, Simon thought he would lift the garden waste onto the tractor forks and plonk it into the trailer, ready for a dump run. As he lifted it up though, with the greenery he also picked up bags and bags of rotten clothes, bedding, shoes, plastic and household waste!

It was disgusting, and quite honestly, we didn’t know where to begin!

We donned gloves, grimaced and started to load it into the trailer…

It was absolutely vile. I am aghast at the lack of disrespect that someone could have for the countryside. Especially when, at the front of the house, in the road that runs through the hamlet are two mini dumpsters, one for household and one for recycling. The irony is that the distance to these dumpsters is around 30 metres and the trek down to the bottom of the garden is 70 metres! WTF!!!

We estimate that we took around 6 tonnes of rubbish to the dechetterie.

Amongst other things was around a tonne of scrap iron, including an entire harrow, for the non-agriculturalists amongst you, something similar to this.

The trailer was definitely fully loaded!

On the front of the trailer we put our spare water container, with the top cut off, which we filled with all the smaller bits of rubbish and plastic. We think that the previous owner had probably been using arsehole corner as his own personal dump for about 20 years. Consequently, the plastic had broken down into pieces the size of a 10p or smaller, along with broken glass, old strips of tablets and about a million yogurt pots.

We basically sifted the earth and hand picked out the rubbish. Minging job!

Amongst the shit and corruption we also found granite stones….piles and piles of them, which is quite handy really because we can use them to help build the extension. So, there’s a plus!

Finally, we just had to get rid of the grass cuttings and smaller bits of garden waste, one more trip to the dump.

 All done in a blistering heatwave, honestly, it was ridiculous!

This was my Fitbit page. I deserve a knickerbocker glory!

With everything moved and cleared out arsehole corner is no more!

It’s all ready now for the construction of the chicken coop! Ladies of the Oak Bank English office, watch this space!

With Chicken Coop Corner (new name!) complete, we could focus our energies back on the utility room.

Simon donned his tiler’s hat and cracked on.

Tiles in place, just the grouting to do.

We got these tiles at a bargain price from a friend in England. When we first bought the house, we set up a budget for each room, we were under with the en suite and we’re managing to keep the utility room’s final amount under too.

Tiling complete it was onwards and downwards with the floor.

Another lucky buy at a large Brico store in Limoges. We managed to get hydracork floating floor boards, which just click together, similar to tongue and groove. No messy glue, and it’s waterproof, hard-wearing and on sale at 20€, reduced from 69€ a box. Bargain!

Do you remember the chicken curtains? Here they are in situ, looking more than paltry!

All we need now is a small under-the-counter freezer, move the washing machine and tumble dryer into place and fit a new back door!

What a difference from the grim and smoke blackened room we started with.

 

It’s been a few weeks hard slog but we are really pleased with the progress.

 

P.S.

For those of you who may be experiencing severe disappointment that there was no more singing from my performing arts, talented husband, do not despair.

During a moment of bonhomie and a few too many Ricard’s (The Ricard brand is the global leader in anise-based alcohols, with more than 40 million litres of Ricard sold each year!) Simon has agreed to be the guest singer at the annual Fete de la Noisette in October.

He can currently be found practicing his repertoire in readiness for worldwide acclaim!