Anyway, we begin with a real positive - we have just heard that we have been accepted by Alastair Sawday to be one of the 'Sawday Special Places to Stay' in France. This is great and we are very pleased indeed to have achieved this. Click on the Sawday logo below and have a look at their website pages for 'Nichoir'!
We thought we would open this new Blog 'Category' - 'Chambres D'Hotes' - to start up a bit of a record of how things go with the actual 'front-end'! A bit rash perhaps!!
Anyway, we begin with a real positive - we have just heard that we have been accepted by Alastair Sawday to be one of the 'Sawday Special Places to Stay' in France. This is great and we are very pleased indeed to have achieved this. Click on the Sawday logo below and have a look at their website pages for 'Nichoir'!
Oh, and because we're 'at the start' .... we could really do with some comments being uploaded on the Sawday site. So, if you have recently stayed with us and could bear to write/re-write comments about your stay on the Sawday site, then that would be very, very kind of you! If you go to the logo link above, then on the Nichoir page you'll find a link for guests to write their comments.
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We have had it very dry for the last three weeks - and very hot, with temperatures in the mid-30's C. This has made us rather anxious for the new wild-flower meadow and we have pumped the well water to provide a daily soaking. It seems this might be paying off, as we can now see the start of a carpet of seedlings .... and just hope these are the wildflowers and not weeds! The vegetable garden is planted out with tomatoes, courgettes, and a range of brassicas and beans: - and the herbs in the raised beds are doing well, along with some earlier courgettes and tomatoes. We have planted about 30 tomatoes, with 9 varieties ... and we'll see which do well ... there is everything from those producing (allegedly) fruit of over a kilo to those that provide clusters of small red and yellow fruit: As I walked round the garden this evening there were rolls of thunder and some very particular cloud formations: - so perhaps we'll have a storm and some rain. But the weather has been good for the blossoms and fruit this year - the mulberry tree is thick with its little red, furry fruit: - and the roses and honeysuckle that surround the house are prolific, with powerful, heady perfumes in the warm evenings. Very beautiful: And what about our wildlife cameras? Well, we are still being rather disorganised about setting these up each evening ... so, some disciple is required - more of this soon. In the meantime, here's a night prowler who was around a couple of nights ago.
Oh dear, I've been neglecting the Blog .... I must plead 'pergola fixation' among other things. Staying with the pergola theme - as described, we ordered and collected the oak some time ago. Well, we actually started construction work about three weeks ago - beginning with measuring up and then digging the first of the eleven holes for the big 3 metre posts ... these had to be quite deep, about 0.75 metres, and into very dense clay - so thick that you could make pots with it: We started with the centre two posts on one side to then take a height and plumb line across to the other posts, as the ground has various sloping areas. We placed a bed of gravel with a centre stone in each hole and then placed the post .... quite tricky to manoevre, as each post is about 40 kilos. Once in place, in went the concrete mix; and after double-checking the position was correct then wooden supports were fixed to ensure it would stay in place: - and this process then progresses from post to post: Well I don't want to induce 'pergola boredom' - heaven forfend ... so, I can report that yesterday the main pergola was complete ... with all the cross-pieces in place and bolted and, miraculously, it appears that the structure is only some 2 centimetres 'out of true' when checking the alignment from post 1 to post 11. Hoorah! The next thing will be to mount the shade sails for the central section and roof the side two sections with the brushwood panels; and plant climbing plants around the edges. After this we'll build the oak fencing along the swimming pool front and bring that in to merge with the pergola. En avance .....
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AuthorSimon lives at Nichoir, Le Bruel, with his wife Noella. They moved here in May 2013, with their Newfoundland dog, Oska, and their cat, Snufkin. Together they have set out on an adventure to create what they hope will be home from home for family and a rather special Chambres D'Hotes for guests. Categories
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