Gardening, and a visit from Lydie

I finally decided to make a start on clearing the potager at the back of the house, mainly because there's nothing else I can really do whilst waiting for the one day's worth of work [sorry, I still feel like emphasising that, for some reason!] before I can begin cleaning up the house and moving everything to it's final resting place.

AND, the potager will look even more of a jungle if I don't make an attempt at controlling it this year!

It had reverted to hot and sunny this morning, so I did a couple of half hour stints digging out couch grass, nettles, thistles, docks and all the other lovelies that had made themselves at home, but I'm trying to leave the bindweed in situ so that we can spray that. Don't think I'll succeed, but I'm giving it a go...

I was driven off by the heat and sun about 2.30, and was just thinking about going and having another bash when there was a knock at the door; I'd locked up the front of the house and was just heading to the back, so very lucky [for me] timing.

It was Lydie, who had come to water the flowers on her parents' grave.

We had a lovely natter, but I was asking how she was coping with her father's death, and she told me that he didn't suffer, he was in an induced coma following a lung infection after his operation, when his kidneys started to fail...

He was on dialysis, but then his liver started to fail too, so the family took the sad decision to stop the dialysis and as his heart got slower he just slipped away. She said it was the 'right' kind of end for him: there was no hint that he wouldn't get better, the doctor reassured him that the coma was just to help him cope with the breathing tube until the infection had cleared, and that everything was progressing nicely.

I'm sad he's gone. I miss seeing him on summer's evenings, particularly; the pair of us would often meet in the road outside the house after he had watered the flowers on Denise's grave and as I was watering the pots in the garden. I have fond memories of chatting in the warm evenings as the light slipped away; I'm glad he got to slip away, too.

I'm comforted that one of my final recollections is of making him laugh about my hill-climbing "prowess"! The Tour de France was passing through a couple of the neighbouring villages, and we were discussing the mountain stages, and I recounted my struggles to get up the hill behind the house without stopping or getting off to push, and how I daren't set out when Isabelle's boys could see me because I was so embarrassed by the "speed" I achieved.

He had a real laugh about that; he was very supportive, and said it's a steep climb [which it is, but not like the mountains], and we decided it was my own personal "Alp".

That memory's helping me now, but I don't suppose laughing will make the legs work better when I finally get my bike out of the grenier!