April Days
Hello Everyone and Happy April
March has flown by and suddenly it is 1st April. April Fools’ Day is known as Poisson d’avril in France where the custom is to play jokes on each other, as in the UK. This dates back to 1564 when King Charles XI moved the start of the year from around 1st April to 1st January. The traditional day of giving gifts at New Year also had to move to 1st January. Old habits, however, die hard and people continued to give gifts at the beginning of April. This gradually changed to fun gifts, mainly food focussed. The fish originates from the fact that 1st April was often in Lent, when eating meat was not allowed, but fish was. Over the years the real fish changed into fish shaped cakes and paper fish amongst other things. One regular joke often played on parents by their children is to pin a paper fish to someone’s back on 1st April.
April is my birthday month so possibly my favourite month of the year! Spring is also one of my favourite times of the year. I love the new life all around us after the slumbering winter. Trees waking up, green shoots appearing and spring bulbs brightening up the garden. At the moment we look out onto fields of rapeseed – a golden yellow landscape. The colour reflects in the lake, turning the water a vibrant greeny-yellow. Our ever-changing view, always inspiring, calming and just lovely.
As I have said umpteen times, we have had a really cold winter – 6 months in thermals! The last week or so has been much warmer but now we are threatened with snow, frost and -5 at night over the weekend. As I write this the weather keeps changing; one moment sunny with an icy wind, the next swirling flurries of snow. Like last year a hard freeze right now is a huge threat to the fruit trees in blossom and to fruit and vegetable producers. Fingers crossed that it is not as bad as predicted. I have stopped my pruning for the time being and will wait until the weekend has passed to continue. I even have strawberry flowers and buds on the raspberries – the promise of an early crop, now slightly under threat.
This week has seen us out in the garden, Max finished clearing out the area for the leaf compost bins and recreated a pathway through the copse. Like most areas of our house and garden, you start one job, move to another and realise how much needs to be done! Our little copse has not been tended to in a very long time, there are saplings everywhere, often crowded together. These need a bit of management. As I mentioned in the post Hints of times gone by at the end of the copse we found the remnants of a curved wall. Once part of an ornamental garden, a boundary wall, seating? Who knows? One day we will restore it. Actually it is a shame it is not in the garden – maybe we should move it?
On the way back from Cordes sur Ciel this week, having taken my neighbour to the doctor, we spotted someone at the roadside collecting respounchous or poor man’s asparagus – how quickly the year goes by. We have the first shoots in our copse – this, as I said in the post Lockdown Birthday Number 2, is a really local thing with everyone out foraging for these at this time of the year, but apparently just in the Tarn! It is quite bitter but delicious sautéed in a little oil with herbs and some garlic or added to an omelette.
Max and I also managed to pop into Albi again on Thursday. It does us good to get out of the house a little more regularly than has been the case. Sometimes being surrounded by all the jobs that need doing, plus a pile of work can get a little much! We both had a few errands to run and then enjoyed a quick lunch and coffee before heading back to the renovation project. Talking of which, we took an old bolt off one of the hidden doors this week only to find a little snapshot of times gone past. A tiny square of perfectly preserved wallpaper. It is quite usual for the hidden doors to be covered in the same wallpaper or paint (more often wallpaper in the past) as the walls of a room, so they remained hidden! I love finding these little pieces of the house’s history, allowing me a tiny glimpse into the former décor of a room. Was it a bedroom? It is the room that adjoins the main bedroom, so maybe a dressing room or sitting room? It would be great to date this wallpaper.
There is one hidden door that we have yet to open which is in the salon. Actually it is a double door of sorts, connecting the salon to the billiard room by way of two doors back to back so to speak. One door opens into the billiard room, the other door is in the salon as I said but seemingly opens towards the billiard room door! Not sure how that works; something for us to discover. This door has been sealed for goodness knows how long, possibly at least 100 years. We plan to open it around my birthday, as I am taking a little time off work. I dread to think what will appear – all sorts of spiders, mounds of chewed wood. We may live to regret it but we can’t just leave it unopened! I will update you as soon as I have news and photos too!
I am finally going to add a couple of new sections to the website: On the menu (Le plat du jour) to complement the seasonal food section and Our Gardening Year (Notre année du jardinage) as we renovate the garden too. These posts will pop up as and when we discover an interesting food or something of note happens in the garden, beyond never ending weeding and grass cutting.
I am also getting closer to a French version of the Coffee and Chocolatines blog and the launch of the petit chateau’s own website! There is always more to do than time to do it. One step at a time.
On that note I wish you a lovely weekend, an enjoyable read when you have time to curl up on a sofa with a cup of coffee and I hope you all keep warm and safe.
A bientôt
Ali xx