It drives me crazy...

...that the plant stores around here dont know how to care for their plants. The supermarkets and other non-plant stores dont either. Nobody appears to water the plants, and the ones at the Brico-marche are all dying or are dead, and they want the same price for them. Just water them, for goodness sake!

There is a large 'garden' store here called Gamm Vert, which you would think would have lots of good plants, just looking at them from the parking lot...but most of them are nearly dead, the trees are sad and forgotten, and we cannot for the life of us think how or why the store doesnt care??? Why? We can only surmise that the growers are the ones that suffers financially when nobody takes care of them in -store. Something needs to change, but I dont know how to rant in French...yet!


Today I bought two orchids. I wasn't going to...dont really need to spend the money right now, yada yada...and while Waz was off buying something essential, I was buying non-essential plants! Sigh!
Cant help some people, but you know....they smell great!! Relly!
The yellow one smells faintly of cinnamon, and the orange one smells like...well, orange blossom!:)

The orange one had not been watered and was in dire straits. The yellow one, on the other hand had been watered from the top and was sopping! You should only water orchids from the bottom. Give them plenty of time to soak up moisture from their roots.
I love the small Oncidiums. They make great house plants, are plentiful of bloom and small enough not to get in the way. They are also colorful and smell good.

 The orange and pink one has gorgeous dark pink new flowers on the side spike. I look forward to those opening in the next week.

 This yellow and brown spotted orchid smells like cinnamon. It too has a new spike with flower buds. Exciting! All the other plants available from the Florist at Leclerc in Barbezieux were in full bloom and only had one flower spike. At 7 Euros each I thought the price was pretty good.

We slept better last night, after a shockingly hot day. It was amazing how it suddenly became much cooler around 11pm, and even though the fan was on full blast mode, the fresh air coming in the open window was cooler than the previous night when our sleep was very disturbed due to the heat.

Looking out the window this morning we saw plenty of haze, no bright blue sky and some cloud. We knew there was a change coming and welcomed it.

Looking at the view as the sun was not quite above the trees, it is still cool, at 22C, around 7.15am.

I was still in my PJ's as I raced around the house this morning, opening all the windows and doors, and reveling in the cool. There was a stiff breeze blowing and some banging as the shutters I had flung open were not secured. The wind rushed through every open portal and anything not secured went flying, lol. The wind was coming from the south, strangely, so those windows were closed and the others stayed open with a more moderate air-flow. 

North eastern France is going to have a huge change in temperature tomorrow, and they are predicting some hail in some areas. We aren't included in that area, but we can expect showers. I will let you know how that goes.

We feel we should be outside making the most of the cooler day, but it is still over 30C out there right now and Waz is now taking his siesta, so I guess it will wait for later in the day.

Doing a small shop for food was essential, but we wished we hadn't as the supermarket was a mad house. Obviously the entire population had been lying low in the extreme conditions and decided today was a good day to replenish supplies. We needed to get some hardware supplies...hence the rant about the plants. I had better not go into the plant dept. of Brico Marche again, or I will cry at the state of the plants. I need a job caring for them, I think.

We had to get some Calcium and Magnesium for our tomato plants which have flower end rot. This is  due to a lack of calcium apparently. They taste good though!

At the supermarket we were delighted to find our favorite Pork Ribs on special still. We bought three packs last time and so enjoyed them that we bought three more packs today. 2 are in the freezer, and one is going on the grill tonight, for dinner. They are so well priced at 5,90 euros per kilo. These are the BEST ribs we have eaten anywhere. I lightly oil them with my favorite walnut oil and salt them well. Let them stand at room temperature and then bar-b-q. They are so meaty and juicy. Waz does a fab. job of cooking them perfectly.

Time for me to go upstairs again and attack another box of photos and memorabilia. I will take a bottle of water and turn the fan on again. 

We took a car load of cardboard boxes to the very busy recycling place this morning. Slowly getting rid of the packing debris. Which reminds me...I need to advertise some of it on one of the local sales sites. We would otherwise have to cut it all into small enough pieces and put in the trash, and we dont want to do that. Plastic is involved!

We cant wait for France to NOT be on vacation. Every business we want to go to is closed for part of August. It is pointless making plans for anything this month, so roll on September.

I have to say we are definitely looking forward to the Fall weather and making plans to visit another city in Europe some time then. We want to put train travel to the test. Will let you know what we decide when we have decided!!:)

Bye for now...work awaits!

Wednesday cant come soon enough.

It is forecast to rain! Phew! We sure need it after the last week of exceptionally hot temps. That Europe is in the grasp of a Heat Wave is news all over the world, just as the Wildfires are in Northern Europe, Greece and California are, to name a few. So much devastation!
There has also been a significant Avalanche on Mt Ruapehu, in the middle of the North Island of New Zealand. It has damaged a Chair lift, in the middle of the ski season. NZ has had such horrid weather this winter, and variable skiing conditions. It appears that the world in general is experiencing great shifts in weather.
I guess 40C + is our new norm in summer? And we wanted to live in the 'Sunny Charente'! Well, we might have to make an annual pilgrimage to winter in NZ in August in the future:)

Yesterday morning was glorious, even though it was already hot, before the sun even came up.
The sky was alive with contrails from all the early morning aircraft. This was just after 7am.

 I did a quick jaunt around the garden to see how all the plants were faring. The roses look a bit worse for wear, but are also rather beautiful in their dying days.

 Evelyn was still alive, but she was the only one on the bush that looked half way decent.

 Waz was going to remove the hoop over the top of the seat and attach it to our front gate. Round things on an entry are good Feng Shui, you know! But I think we will clean her up and keep her. The tree is dead, so that will go soon, and we will find another shady spot for the old seat. The table is going also! woot!

 At first I thought this was smoke, but with some more thought I realized it was someone ploughing their field. SO dry and dusty. No wonder everything in the house is covered in fine dust!

 Waz has one load of this pile left to take to the dump site. It has been too hot to get rid of it, so it stays and reminds us of work to do when it is finally cool enough. In the meantime, the rain will add some weight to it, no doubt. We will try to get that concrete up I think. An above ground swimming pool used to sit on this circle of concrete. We have the pool in the garage all folded up, and somehow wish we had it up and running, in this heat.

Along the hedge line of our eastern side is this concrete wall. We cant for the life of us understand why it is there. Our neighbor cant help us, as he has only been here for a year. We might get rid of this also and it will expand the horizon on the lawn, which will make our 1/3 of an acre look even more expansive.

 That dark spot in the foreground is a sizable hole. There are several of them along this line of concrete. We wonder what kind of critter inhabits it?? I'm hoping it isnt a garden snake. They are about!

 Even the umbrella was sagging in the heat. Actually I was attempting to fend off the heat from the pink room this morning. I wasn't successful, because by 8am I already had the shutters closed everywhere. Our brief opening of everything started around 7am, and an hour later I was closing up again. I will start to grow mushrooms soon, I swear. I HATE being in the dark and inside. Two days and I'm almost climbing the walls.

 Yes, the French word for grape is Raisin, but these really look like...well, raisins! what else, lol. I haven't tasted them yet. These are on OUR vine, and we havent been good at spraying them with copper oxide to kill fungus, so we have some interesting looking leaves and grapes. Next year!

So, I'm a little obsessive....and both of us were wow'd by the way the mercury rose at such a pace today. We couldn't believe it.

This weather station is the one out on the fence line at the bottom of the property. Waz only has the best tech gadgets, so this station does everything he wants it to. 

See the 43.8C on the bottom left? That was at 6.40pm (18.40) with 24% humidity! Yes! THAT hot, THAT late in the day. I forgot to take a photo of the 45.8C we saw there at 3.15pm, this afternoon. Believe me, it was stifling out there. It was as if someone had sucked all the oxygen out of the air. I went out to water the tomatoes which were in their death throes at that time and felt as if I was on fire.

 I have lived in Australia and experienced these hot and dry temperatures there. I was a chef at the time and it was hotter outside than it was in the kitchen. We used to go swimming below the restaurant, which was an old bathing pavilion, and it was like swimming in warm soup.

So here we were at 8.15pm just before I opened the doors in the pink room. It was 31.5 INSIDE...and 32.6 outside according to the weather station

 but the humidity level has increased to 40%. Clammy now!

 This clock says 34C inside the pink room....we have plenty of options here! lol

 It was still HOT outside, and the air didn't cool much, even when we went walking at around 9pm. The temp gauge at the front door, which is always the coolest place,  at 8.30pm said....

 31C, as witnessed on my watch, below.

I know it is hard to believe these temps, but I dont think I have ever been so hot outside. Not even in Aussie, where we used to lie on the floor not moving in 42C, with jugs of water around us and wet cloths on our brows.

However....We did get some work done today.
I eventually left the obsessive looking at temperatures and clocks and went upstairs to open some more cartons. I cant get near my sewing table, so it was imperative that I make a start. I moved the fan from the guest room to just inside the door and turned it on my person while I went down memory lane with family photos et al.

What fun to look back at when the kids were little, our neighbors and us lived at each other's houses and were part of each other's families. Precious times and memories, and I marvel at the fun and funny little boys my two were.
Lots of certificates, framed and unframed bear testament to accomplishments earned at school and beyond. I will post them when they are more settled in their lives and they want them as part of their own history.
Artwork galore that I have kept since the year dot. I will photograph it all as I have nowhere to store it all now. I am going to scan all the photos and eventually make my boys a book of their lives, each. A good winter thing to do?

We hate to heat the oven up as it heats the whole house up, but today's duck needed to be cooked. Good thing it heated fast and we enjoyed that for dinner with a salad. Too hot to eat too much.

We went for a short walk down the rows of vines opposite the house, this evening, but it was still warm. A quick tour of the property with some vine pulling was about all the activity that took place.
We enjoyed a cup of tea sitting on the entry terrace in the increasing cool, with the front door thermometer just below 30C. The windows in the bedroom are open, but it is hard to get rid of the heat. We will just lie very still, tonight:)

It is getting dark earlier now. At just after 10pm the light is gone and now there are a glorious array of stars out there. The sky has been so clear, and we have delighted at standing at our bedroom window and looking out at all our twinkling neighbors.

Time to turn in. No nap today, so I think I'm ready for a kip! I managed to finish another book yesterday, and now have a new one to take to bed with me ...and Waz of course:)
Night, night.

Did you say it was HOT today hunny?

The  weather station recently installed (unpacked first, you understand!) on the fence at the bottom of the garden registered 41.2C at 11am today. I didnt look to see what the temperature was at 4pm, but I have only just opened the shutters and doors to the pink room to let some air in...no wind to speak of, just slightly cooler air. it is 9.15pm. It is also 33C in the pink room where I am writing this. The standing fan is on medium pointing directly at me, and I feel that if I move too much, I will melt.


Waz is a gadget guy, so we have them everywhere. Useful and useless information is gathered, but heck, its fun, isnt it? lol

 Just opened the doors to let some fresh warm air inside! ha! It is cooling off slightly...and maybe around midnight it will be cooler?

Dinner was supposed to be duck legs but we didnt want to add any further heat to the house, so we ate crackers with smoked salmon pate, sliced tomatoes and melon. I also had some little goat cheese balls stuffed with pesto, which were delish spread on the crackers first, followed by the pate. Yum!

The past two days have been so hot we didnt really know what to do with ourselves. Having guest for two nights was lovely, and we all opted to go walking in the vines last night around 8pm, but it was hot and we all labored up the hill to the top before sitting in the grass and enjoying the gorgeous views from up there.
Brent and Lesley are former employers of mine and friends for over 30 years. It was lovely to see them and spend time catching up, and sad to see them on their way this morning. It would have been nice for a longer visit, but we will take what we can get. Now that they know how to find us, perhaps there will be a longer visit in the future! We sure hope so.

Here they are relaxing after a long hot day on the road.We enjoyed drinks and a meal outside on this terrace...lunch...and having a stiff breeze helped keep us all comfy.

 We bar-b-q'd some lovely pork ribs for dinner on the south terrace, and though it was HOT I put a fan out there to help bring some airflow. Not sure it was much use at all, to be honest. We sweated it out a bit!
The shutters are closed to help keep the inside of the house cool. It works! Thanks to thick concrete walls and shutters we stay reasonable inside.

Rather than sitting around inside yesterday (Friday) we all decided to go into Cognac for a 'look see'. I think that's a very kiwi term, lol. We did look and we did see, but we also suffered greatly in the heat.

I love outdoor art, especially when accompanied by trash cans! and a large can of paint!

 It looks hot, doesnt it! It was stifling!

 We are all walking towards the covered Halles or markets. There weren't many vendors in there this day, which was unusual on a Friday, but we walked around all of those who were there and remarked on the high prices and compared them to what we had paid for the same things just two days previously. In some cases the difference was 1.50euros per Kg!

 Lesley and I disappeared into a fabric store (I know how to find it now and it has some loverly fabrics in there!!!) and came out the other door. Our menfolk were otherwise engaged and didnt see that we had fooled them:)

 We had some issues getting our parking ticket. Crikey! Why do they make it so complex for those of us who are challenged in the first place???? Anyhoo, we bought a 1euro ticket which gave us three hours of parking. Good thing it was under a tree, too!
Some bright spark (who shall remain nameless) decided that it would be easier to walk down to the Charente River, about a km down the hill....of course at some stage we would have to walk UP the hill!! ahem!
So, we walked through the lovely gardens at the Mairie, which kept us a little cooler in the shade of the many trees

 It was lovely to see it in summer, after our last walk through here in the middle of winter.
Lesley is walking up the steps to the Mairie, thinking it might be open, but of course it was just after noon, and it was closed for lunch.

 We sat on a bench and enjoyed the view from the top of this hill, and then, looking at our watches, decided that we needed to make our way down to the water to find some lunch.

Of course we chose an Italian Restaurant overlooking the Charente River. La Scala had a decent enough menu, and the food was pretty good. Waz wasnt overly impressed with the huge chunk of cod in his Fish and Chips.

 Lesley and I were too hot to eat anything warm, so we opted for the avocado and salmon two ways salad. Excellent!

 The other three enjoyed this Provence, medal winning rose. We drank heaps of water. The heat is dry, so you feel a bit dessicated as a result.

 Our restaurant is there on the left with the red umbrella. We wanted to sit outside in the shade but were directed to a table inside, as they were fully occupied outside. The original town gates of Cognac face the Charente River.

 We walked up through the gates on our way back to the car. Phew! Talk about hot! All those buildings funneling the heat and the hot cobbles reflecting the heat, we had to stop often and walk in what little shade we could find.

 Looking back through the town gate towards the Charente River.

 A few Colombage (Col om barzhe) houses along the way.

 We all stood in the shade at the entry to this pretty place and enjoyed the breeze being funneled down there.

 Onwards towards the car and cool.

 Hollyhocks grow everywhere. They are coming to the end of their summer lives though.

 This is an historic house. I have the legend but am too lazy to go and find it! sorry!

 Ahhh...the church. Now we know where we are!

 It has always amused me to see that houses and businesses are built onto the side of the church...left.

 Before getting into the car we stopped off at a Salon du the...Tay...a tea shop. We ordered a boule (ball) of citron (lemon) sorbet thinking it would cool us down somewhat. WRONG! The heat pump in the shop would not work in the high temperatures, we were told...merde it was hot in there. They were very kind and brought us tiny glasses of cold coffee and then the man appeared with a tiny jug of Maple syrup to add to the coffee! Interesting!!!

Back in the car feeling very warm indeed, we made our way home. Wanting to show Brent and Lesley one of our favorite towns, We stopped off in Jarnac and got out of the car to admire the cool (not really!) of the river with the Le Boat hire boats on it. They weren't going anywhere, and their inhabitants were snoozing on the back in their bathing suits. Plenty of people swimming in the river in another part not far away. Looked lovely!

 We know that the Charente is THE most polluted river in France. I just read this! Too bad!

So we then made our way home after driving through the middle of town, up and around the roundabout at the top and back down, coming home through Segonzac per usual and up the hills into the Grande Champagne area that we all HOME. Lovely to be home in the relative cool, and though it is tempting to open all the windows, it only made the house hotter! gah!
Dinner was very much whatever we could throw together on the table and some Chicken Aiguilletes that I had previously marinated, which Waz bar-b-q'd. We sat on the south terrace and enjoyed the late afternoon/evening together.
Breakfast this morning was a kind of bread pudding that I had put together the night before. With chopped dark chocolate and plump cranberries in it, I popped it in the oven when we got up and it was ready when everyone came down stairs. A little maple syrup and some sloppy whipped cream...and some of us had 2nds! yum! A special treat to send out guests on their way.

Sad to see them go, but we know there will be other visits...we certainly hope so. We have such a special place to share with others and loved having the good kiwi company, and special friends.

Well, its too hot for me to sit here any longer, so Im off to the bedroom where the window is open and Im hoping there is a cool breeze. Waz had a mozzy repellant in the room last night, and we kept the windows open all night, but there wasnt a breath of air! lol. The Fan was on full all night and we did sleep but it wasnt of a good quality I dont think. I hope tonight is better. Well, we can hope, right?

Night, night! A bientot.