Page Hirst: France

20.04.17
An early morning walk. The weather is cold but brilliant! After all the hot weather we have had already and the few cold miserable days, this was a great day to wake up to!

01.09.16

As I am now very happy with our new terrace I have already been thinking
of how I want to furnish it next year and found some old rusty,
I don't know what you call these things, in the garage.
They were rusty and Alan made me paint them them with
this pink paint which apparently stops them from rusting further.
I love shabby chic and I will be painting them white
(lots of arguments still ongoing) next year and use them somehow on the terrace.

Looks great just now and we're nearly there.

16.08.16

And then there is work again: the mirabelles (small plums) are ripe and our freezer is nearly empty:

Putting down a sheet to catch the mirabelles

Nearly a bucket full of mirabelles. More than sufficient for me for one afternoon!

I had some problems putting this de-stoner together,
but got it going in the end.
It is quite an old contraption which we bought years ago in a
charity shop in Switzerland. I don't suppose the later models use a different system!

I realised that the the stones still had a lot of flesh abound them,
so I decided to use this method to get as much fruit as possible off the stones.

I boiled them for a short while with some sugar, used a hand blender, put them in ice-cream tubs and when they had cooled off in the freezer. I will use these later for whatever I need: jam, pie, sauce, breakfast muesli, etc.

I am pleased with a good afternoon's work but when Alan came later with half a bucket full of beans I had enough. The beans will have to wait until tomorrow!

14.08.16

And now it's time to relax and have a romantic evening. Wieso in der Ferne schweifen, wenn ........

24.07.16

Work in progress:

19.07.16

Rising moon over Oberlarg!

08.07.16

It's starting to look like something:

Hard work!

Looks great from this side already.

Have to do the other side tomorrow!

24.07.16

Big project going on in the garden!

21.07.16

After days and days of rain, it seems to be going the right way now and at 9.15 PM I took the following, very promising pictures:

12.07.16

It is raining once again but despite Alan's complaints that the rain has ruined the garden, have a look at the view I have from our garden while eating my healthy breakfast: home made muesli (without sugar) made of porridge oats, apple sauce and quark, half a grapefruit and freshly pressed orange juice!

03.06.2016

The redtails have abandoned the nest, which may be a good idea because it was just next to our door and on top of the garden light! Pity though!

Anyway, here are some pictures of our garden:

05.05.2016

Nest building.

We have some red-tails in the back garden who decided that the best place for their new nest is in the twigs of the yellow rose bush we have next to one of our back doors.

It was very interesting to see how they started yesterday by just dropping small twigs in the fork of some of the rose bush twigs. When there was a sort of a platform, small twigs were placed with more care about where to place them. When the outside was high enough, you could see them trying out the inside by sitting in it and wriggling about. Alan put some Yorkie hair on the rose bush and it was all gone this morning so I suppose the nest will be quite cosy.

It is great to watch this. We can see them working away when sitting at the table!