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Ice Sculptures

Bonjour à tous

I hope you are all well and enjoying January?

The weather here at the moment is so cold. Each night the thermometer dips to minus figures. We had one night, the first in ages when the temperature stayed at 0°C – a cause for celebration! We have had cold crisp sunny days, freezing fog days where everything is shrouded in a bone chilling cold, a light dusting of snow greeted us on Wednesday morning and hard frosts daily. We wake most mornings to a white landscape, each and every blade of grass and leaf frosted, glittering in the sunlight. Quite the most breath-taking sight, like magic fairy dust or thousands of tiny diamonds sprinkled across the garden, the roof, the fields. The sedum heads take on a new beauty, their now dried flowers sparkling with frost crystals, always worth leaving in the garden during winter for just this type of weather. Even the lake has started to freeze over!

Given the continuous cold, the frost is not melting during the day so layers build up creating ice sculptures along the verges, encasing hardy plants or seed heads left from last summer. Nature is quite amazing. These ‘ice plants’ are truly beautiful but also a testament to the chill across the land.

With all this beauty comes some challenges. The roads down to Cordes and Laguepie have been a bit scary, black ice a hidden danger, making the twists and turns of these hilly roads a bit stressful. Not that long ago I drove down a back road to take my neighbour’s son to the station, little realising that part of the steep windy road never gets sunlight. I felt the car wheels go just as another car coming towards me had the same problem. My verge was a steep drop, theirs an embankment. A moment of holding one’s breath (actually I swore) and had I not been clutching the steering wheel I might well have crossed my fingers! It is a while since I drove in icy conditions, instinct took over and we regained control. I am avoiding this road for the time being.

I am sure we will look back at our time without proper heating in this house and laugh! We were told that winters are not that cold in this area. Well each winter has got colder and colder for longer each time. A sign of climate change no doubt. Even locals have said it is much colder than usual. The petit chateau is built directly on the earth, without foundations, so the frozen ground exhales its chilly breath upwards, through wooden and tiled floors. Feet suffer, constantly feeling like blocks of ice, warmed in the shower or by the fire resulting in delightful chilblains! Wow they are painful. We are all dressed in layers upon layers of clothes, thankful for thermals. I have become especially attached to my thermal tights and long sleeved vests. I think I wear more layers now than I would going skiing. I even slept in a hat recently as our room was like stepping into one of those giant cold stores. Hot water bottles heat the cold sheets, and once under the covers, the flannel bedding becomes cosy. Getting out of the bed in the morning is not fun, we can see our breath as we scramble to the shower! Days are broken up with trips to the kitchen for hot drinks – coffee and chocolatines galore to stave off the cold. Mulled wine has helped too!

An exciting development last week after much delay has been the installation of two heated towel rails, one for our bathroom, one for the tower shower room. Who knew what a luxury dry warm towels were! It took the electrician a few days as chiselling out the walls for the cabling, plus trying to feed cables down to our bathroom, was not a quick job. He had to lift a tile on the second floor balcony, working outside in sub-zero temperatures to feed the cable down, only to find that the gap below was huge. What I thought was a lovely old ceiling was in fact about 20 or so years old and hid a much higher ceiling, plus some fragments of rather bright wallpaper – very 1970s! Our bathroom was once a bedroom. It is always interesting finding remnants of former decoration, from whatever era, as the house gradually lets us into a few more secrets. I have also discovered that the walls of the downstairs bathroom/laundry room are emerald green – the white paint in there is peeling revealing the layer below, probably due to the dryer creating a lot of condensation on cold days.

The travel restrictions to the UK were lifted last week, so after an extended stay, my mother has returned to the UK. She may miss the cup of tea in the morning in bed, the apéro time, a firm fixture in France, but I am sure not the cold!  I will miss having her here, as it has been lovely spending so much time with her after such a long gap. It is my turn to stay in France, so Max has taken her back. He hasn’t left here since January 2020 so I am sure he will enjoy the brief escape from DIY and the cold.

The main reason for me staying this time is that my eldest son turned 28 on Friday and he is here with us in France at the moment. Where did those years go? I don’t know about other parents, but my sons’ birthdays always make me think back across their lives, from birth to now. How time flies, through ups and downs, scraped knees, smiling faces, joys and tears, struggles and successes, watching them grow in every way.  So many memories. What a privilege to have them as my sons.

Before my mother left we paid another visit to the local vineyard so she could get some wine to take back. We managed to nip in to Albi so she could get a few bits and pieces, presents for the neighbour, her great grandchild, etc. We also had to get some emergency wood supplies, as it was proving challenging to track down our wood supplier. This took us near to one of the brocantes we like. We found the prettiest little occasional table, beautiful wood, inlaid and quite stunning. It was an absolute bargain so into the boot of the car it went! Now to find somewhere to put it! What do you think of it?

With such long lasting chilly weather, we have got through our wood supply rather faster than predicted, plus some of our seasoned wood has become rather damp. Thanks to a combination of heavy rain and saturated ground, the bottom logs in the pile had sunk into the mud and now need time to dry out. The next lot to season are going on palettes! So in very cold weather we have been eking out what is left of the wood. It is quite hard to sit and type when it is so cold, so I keep abandoning my computer in favour of more physical work! All good but not helping me keep up with blogs or work! Good news though – after a number of calls I have finally tracked down the wood supplier and 2 stères arrived yesterday so plenty of physical work stacking wood to warm me up, and Max too when he gets back!

As an aside and in case you are interested as I have just read this, a stère is 1 cubic metre of wood, originally defined by law in France in 1793 and used primarily as a measure for firewood.

There are tiny signs that Spring is on its way, little shoots have started appearing in spite of the weather. We have also been rethinking our plans so have the beginnings of our Spring shoots of ideas. More on that next week, along with an interesting discovery up the chimney in the former kitchen and definite blog plans (finally).

Until next time. Stay safe and warm. Thank you for joining me.

A bientôt

Ali xx

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