Fresh Start February
Bonjour à tous
Happy February to you all. The last official month of winter. This year I am counting the days to warmer weather as it has been so cold. I love each season for different reasons, but in an old cold stone house with a serious lack of comprehensive heating, winter has taken on a different dimension – mainly the numerous layers I have to put on each day to stave off frostbite, the chilly bathrooms, seeing one’s breath as you work and chilblains! The days we have had of sunshine and frost are truly glorious. I have bored you with the photos as it is all so magical. Currently we have moved to cold, grey, foggy, rainy weather, with occasional bursts of sunshine. The ground is chilled to deep freeze temperatures which seep up through every crack and crevice in the house. However enough said on all of that. I think you all know now that it is SO COLD here (and that is just inside the house)!
To February – or as my son said Fresh Start February. The year’s hopes and wishes have been identified. I have stopped setting resolutions and goals as life has a way of hijacking time. There are things I want to achieve, start, continue, make time for and that is my way forward. I am also going to make a real effort to pop good memories into the memory jar to look back at on 31st December, to remind myself of fun times and milestones. It is the Chinese Year of the Tiger, Max’s Chinese birth sign it turns out. That obviously diverted me for a moment while I looked up everyone’s birth signs under the Chinese Zodiac system. Anyway back to February.
January whizzed by, in spite of the cold. February is kitchen focus month for us – to finally finish the kitchen. As I said last week, we can’t do it all as there are things we can’t afford to get yet – the stainless steel work surface for the island, the tiling for the sink and cooker areas, the new cooker and further fitted cupboards, but we can repair the cracks, finish decorating, paint the doors and windows now they have been repaired and puttied, put up the shelves and construct the window seat. We have talked through the plans, adjusted where necessary, and now have a schedule of works. So organised!
The kitchen is quite a large room, 39m² with 3m height ceilings (apparently it is almost 120m³ – basically the same size as our pool!). It is surprisingly not the biggest room in the house. The attic we are converting is 60m² apparently. A long time ago I lived in central London in a tiny flat with a shoebox for a kitchen, where somehow I managed to make wedding cakes, cater for someone’s wedding and cook for friends. When we had our wedding here in 2020, this kitchen just didn’t seem large enough, and I was only cooking for 12. It is funny how you grow into whatever space you have or don’t, adapting accordingly! These photos show you what it was like before we started any work on it:
I am looking forward to sharing the kitchen with you once we have made progress. The island is in along with one cupboard for food. The enormous dresser needs moving and we are putting up shelving on either side of the huge fireplace, as well as along the wall above the sink and cooker areas. The majestic arched window is getting a window seat with storage underneath and the dog is getting a new bed – made from an upcycled palette and an old foam mattress, which will hopefully sit under a yet to be found side table! Lots to do, alongside work and all the other things we have to cram into each day.
Talking of kitchens, what was the former kitchen is now the souillarde (utility room). This room is at the front of the house and not a favourite of mine at the moment. It has a very dark stained wood ceiling which feels quite oppressive, the walls are covered in some kind of knobbly concrete layer, plus it appears to be home to a number of quite sizeable spiders. The souillarde measures 18m² with a ceiling height of 2.9m height. It will become a bright clean utility/boot/animal feeding room in due course, home to storage cupboards for excess china, glasses as well as outdoor boots, etc. But that is not the current project.
It used to lead into a back kitchen, demolished by the previous owner and turned into a west facing covered terrace. I have mentioned before that I found the old stone sink along with many of the wall stones buried in what is now the cutting garden. The stones will be great for rebuilding the driveway entrance wall, but the sink has tiles and concrete to chip out of it before I can put it to use in the garden somewhere.
While I was in the UK before Christmas, Max started dismantling the old cooking area in the massive fireplace of the old kitchen. The impressive firedogs are in reasonable condition and will be cleaned up. The metal plate at the bottom had completely rusted through, the hood is not much better, the fire plate at the back now a shadow of its former self. He discovered old metal hooks for suspending pots over the fire hanging from a large metal pole inside the chimney. You can stand up inside the chimney and look up to the top. The previous owner removed the chimney itself as it used to leak, but the chimney breast remains, blackened with hundreds of years of soot. The current fireplace is clad in very ugly stone, but behind you can see how much larger it was before that. Slightly alarmingly you can see the ends of the ceiling boards butting into the chimney flue. It seems the chimney was lined with tiles but nonetheless how it didn’t catch fire I have no idea! Many of the tiles have gone now allowing us to see more of the structure of the house. Spooky standing inside a chimney but fascinating, if a little sooty! I even found a tap up there – what was that for? Any ideas? We are mulling over plans for the fireplace area. It would be amazing to remove the cladding from the surround and see what is behind – one day.
For now the work will be in the current kitchen. Watch this space for updates. However finding the remnants of the old kitchen has reignited my interest in doing some further research into the history of this house – more on that soon.
I am also hoping to get out into the garden at some point this month. Shoots are beginning to appear in spite of the cold. Flowerbeds need a tidy up, roses need pruning but not until this cold snap has passed. My hellebores are not looking happy this year, perhaps ravaged by the frosts. I think everything will be slow this year but hope that we escape a late frost so the fruit trees have a chance to bear fruit. The potager needs reorganising. We are expanding the bed sizes and relocating some of the fruit. The ground is too cold and hard at the moment so another job on hold, but plenty of others to fill this gap, including sorting through seeds and starting some of them off!
I marvel at nature, no matter the weather trees begin to show signs of life, small pink buds appearing at the tips of branches, determined spring bulbs poke their leaf tips out of the ground, all promising better warmer days. The evenings are getting longer, although it is still dark in the morning. Slowly Spring is giving signs that it is on the way. Something (cat or another creature) keeps digging up my latest bulb planting areas. My wild garlic was doing really well but something has broken the leaves. It is however a very tenacious plant so is making good progress growing back. I am looking forward to seeing what has survived, what will come up. The relocated irises have taken well in the cutting bed, time will tell whether they flower this year. All those areas that have suffered interference from an uninvited helper will in time show their wares – hopefully. Our first snowdrop has shown its delicate face – something that always makes me smile.
Aside from all these plans, this week has been quiet. We had a coffee with our widowed neighbour and I learnt about another plant in our garden – le fragon faux houx (literal translation is false holly broom, but is actually Butcher’s Broom or Box Holly) – a prickly plant growing in abundance in our copse. It got the name Butcher’s Broom as butchers used to tie branches together to brush off their chopping blocks. This plant has been used medicinally for blood circulation for thousands of years. A little research revealed that it is good for Restless Leg Syndrome, something I suffer from. Might be worth looking in to. It also grows edible shoots in the Spring that taste a little like asparagus. Fascinating. The things you learn!
Another neighbour from the next hamlet offered to help move our stones with his tractor, up the hill to the wall that needs repairing. An offer we sadly couldn’t take up then as Max was busy putting the radiator into the room my son studies in. Radiator job done now, the stones are not urgent but so kind of the lovely man to offer. We have researched storage solutions, updated the list of things we need to buy (never ending at times) and I have been working. Max writes children’s stories and has just sent a completed book off to some agents. Fingers crossed someone finds it wonderful and takes him on.
So on that note I will bid you a wonderful week and leave you with some intrepid cats testing out the pool cover! I hope you enjoy our tales from the Tarn. As ever I would love to hear from you.
A bientôt
Ali xx
