Not Only Garden Work …

As always this time of year, the garden in France has grown like mad; grass knee-high, weeds everywhere and hedges bulging out of control. So last week was spent having a go at all the green stuff with hedge trimmer, grass strimmer and bare hands. The weather was wonderful; it only started raining as we left yesterday morning. I won’t bore you with pictures of garden tools and machinery, or even worse, sweaty gardeners, but I leave you with a picture more representative of what we indulged in after heavy duty garden work. Aaaah!

Garage Sale – looking for bargains

On Sunday morning a friend of ours rang and said in a slightly excited voice that their neighbour had a power cleaner for sale. Hurry before he sells it to someone else! Of course, it was the day of the garage sale in our area and we were late.

After a quick breakfast we got there in time to view the machine and loads of other stuff. This was only the beginning of a very successful day of a string of bargains filling the car completely. In particular the last place was like a goldmine; they were moving and tried to get rid of as much as possible. The lady of the house was on her own and knew little about the machinery, tools and other gadgets. Any low offer we made, she accepted straight away.

We ended up with a garden vac, power cleaner (from the first place), strimmer, a tool with a rotating brush to weed between flagstones etc. etc. There was enough to set up a hire shop or start a gardening business. Most of them had only been used a few times and one was even still in its packaging! We felt like we were robbing her, but she was only too pleased to get rid of all the stuff, otherwise they would have to pay for moving it all to the UK. So, we were really doing them a favour, were we not? The irony of it all was obviously that I had just finished doing this type of garden work a couple of days ago, but I can now look forward to future gardening with less strain on my poor body.

Best of all was that this lady had a good quality car seat for my granddaughter, who will be visiting shortly. From other ‘garages’ we also got toys, a trike and some lovely little dresses. Little Amanda and her parents are travelling with a low-budget airline and have strict luggage limitations, so we figured we had to stock up a bit on life’s essentials.

This is Saturday’s Welcome Committee.

Gruelling gardening

I have not had much time for blogging for a few days now because I had some unfinished business in the garden and around the house. When I got into the garden the first day equipped with my trusted garden gloves and this ‘three-pronged claw tool’ (don’t know the official name for it, anybody?), I discovered that one of the cats, that come into our garden on a regular basis, had been bird hunting again. In an earlier post I accused squirrels of messing about with our garden lantern, knocking it off the iron pole and smashing it against the patio step. After that incident I have seen on a couple of occasions how a cat comes out of its hiding place under a shrub like a rocket, trying to catch birds sitting on the lantern. All of a sudden I realised how it had happened that first time, because now it had happened again with the replacement lantern ending up on the ground.

The rest of the day (4 hrs actually) I spent on my knees worshipping the Great Garden Gnome, i.e. I clawed weeds out from between the flagstones. There was just too much stuff growing there for the power cleaner that I had hired for the following day. I didn’t exactly look forward to the second day of monotonous work, and when I got up that morning I was stiff and sore but also determined to get the job done.

This time I had all the right equipment in working order, not like the faulty connection last time that got me all wet before starting even. It took me five hours to power-clean the rest of the flagstones; we have quite a few of them; but they are now all squeaky clean all the way to the street as well. Our big front step is now so bright that I recommend the wearing of sunglasses. That evening I was only happy to sit on a chair for hours at Mrs S’s departmental do in a restaurant. Getting up from the chair was another matter altogether!