Changes at our place (with some photos)

Continuing our trench:

Gosh, it's nearly two years since I posted about Vincent's trench, and it seems to have worked wonderfully; the potager is not weed free, but we definitely don't seem to be having any root incursion,and that was the main thing!

Bindweed remains a problem, but it's no longer 'seeping' in from the field, and I think I've virtually eradicated the couch grass [and that one I can manage - wait for damp ground, dig gently, and it pulls out nicely].  We are going to try spot spraying with a different herbicide [recommended by the very helpful chap who told us about the root killer which worked fabulously on the sycamore stump], but that's a post for another day [want to see if it works, first!]...

I don't know why I didn't get him to continue digging in the membrane to the fence we share with Philippe, but it pretty quickly became apparent that I should have done.

Oh, well, finally got around to asking him to come back, and it's "sorted" now.

AND, he brought and spread for us a load of topsoil [the potager had sunk quite a lot].

I'm very keen to start planting things, but also know that if we don't get the space bindweed-free before we start we've set ourselves up for years of 'pain'; I've waited this long, I can wait a bit longer!

Shredder:

We ordered a shredder, that arrived disassembled into small enough bits that we could get it into the car [so didn't have to hire a van].

It assembled pretty easily - a bit of pushing & shoving and (if I remember correctly) only a bit of 'percussive adjustment' from a 'universal spanner' [I always use a wood block to protect everything I'm 'drifting' from the head of the hammer, so it's not as brutal as it sounds!], and it was there.

We started on the compost "mountain" that had shrunk somewhat, but was a) still huge, and b) nowhere near becoming compost.

We were watering the shreddings really well into the trench left behind after M. Milesi had built his wall - we wanted to not have a huge gap, and are hoping to plant some red elder/smokebush/red twisted hazel when we can get around to it.

We just need nature to work its magic, now.

Coloured garden areas:

Not sure why I've put this here, as I haven't got any photos...  But I am attempting to have (some) themed areas near the driveway.

After my surgery last year [a BIG sorry to David], I managed to accumulate 69 pots to take to France [I managed to load all of them with only one hand, so I did what little I could], and 71 plants [I think I'd managed to sneak a couple of transplants into one pot?], which my wonderful assistant in his (temporary) role of head gardener planted.

It was 25°C at 10pm, so we probably got it badly wrong with when to take plants to a hot, continental, climate...

The aim is to have a bunch of pink coloured plants all near each other, then merging into purple/blue planting, which is next to "hot" colours.

Obviously, there will be things popping up [particularly yellow daisy-type flowers] that I may need to move...

And despite what I have read/been told, don't chop down Oriental Poppies; I had a fabulous clump of "Allegro", which I managed to reduce to about four sickly sprouts...  I thought I'd nothing to lose by transplanting them to where I wanted them (most of them looked on the way out), so I think I have a couple of tiny shoots in the "hot" area, and one I missed in the "pink" zone.

On the upside: we bought a small pump with a tube that drops down into our rainwater tank, and that works brilliantly - so much so that we managed to water in all the plants and soak most of the compost/shreddings before it ran out.  Another long-term aim is to sort out the leak in the tank, and create a drain nearer the top for when it will overfill.

Stealing the drive:

Well, not stealing, more 're-allocating'...

The old (pale brown) bark is where the drive used to finish...

But because of the piles of sand and gravel, we haven't used that space for several years (and don't miss it), so it made sense [to me, at any rate!], to properly incorporate it into the garden...

We've been accumulating tufa every time we find some, and nearly have enough to give the drive a defined edge...

Well, at least we've started, and it looks a lot tidier!

Orchids in the meadow:

We know we probably shouldn't...  [Move orchid plants, that is.]

But since the communes have all taken to mowing down the verges regularly through the summer...

We've seen a tiny fraction of the number of plants/varieties in the countryside...  [They're going to be eradicated in the wild if that continues; like England.]

And Jean-Luc mows ours off when he cuts the hay...

So we transplanted as many orchids as we could find to the edges J-L can't get at...

And we've only had a couple of plants looking a bit sickly, but we've got another 12-15 flowering away.

We dug as huge a clump of soil out as we could and, and used the mycorrhiza powder in the holes.

Now we're just hoping they will set seed and we can establish a colony.

David one day [he'd strimmed that part down to the ground about eight weeks earlier; to the left of the picture is the bit he hadn't touched - spot the difference?].

One day later: he'd cut pathways so we can get to the plants we're trying to cosset [some fruit trees, the above orchids and our nettle colony (not mad; we haven't seen any of either variety of swallowtail, or the marbled white,  since we cleared behind the house, and I want to encourage whatever butterflies had laid their eggs on them to come back) - OK, we're not actively cossetting the nettles, but I want them to establish away from where the hay-cutting will chop them down].

Phew, that's it for me [for now!].

Trying to catch up (snippets)...

"Turn it down":

The boiler was playing up (again) - it has done that a couple of times before [and been fixed]: it will turn up, but then refuses to turn down.  Fine, for a few hours, or even days when the weather is bitterly cold...

But not when the poêle has got up to temperature; once we've been in the house a couple of days, that's the only heat we use/need.

And when we're not there?

Crazy to pay for heating in an empty house!  It nicely turns itself on when we send it a text message or the temperature drops below 7°C [it was set to do that below 10°C, but we don't need that much warmth, just enough to prevernt the pipes from freezing, so I adjusted it], so the house never gets really chilled, and we light the poêle as soon as we arrive in winter and turn the heating off either immediately, or after a couple of hours, depending on whether the temperature is above or below freezing outside.

The (new) chap suggested we turn the heating down...

...rather than him diagnosing and correcting whatever the problem was.  [First time it happened, it was a faulty (tele)command unit (?), the second time a factory reset on the electronics worked; neither of which I could have sorted out myself.]

It's lucky David was dealing with the heating engineer: I think he was treated to "erm, no" in French, whereas I am bilingual in cutting sarcasm when I need to be [so much so that even the most unhelpful of French workmen (almost) invariably notice], and if that fails, I am perfectly capable of shouting loudly and waving my arms for emphasis, until everyone agrees I should get my way.

Not my preferred approach [who likes grown adults behaving like a thwarted toddler?], but when people have already been paid to remedy a fault, and fail to comprehend why leaving it unremedied/worse is unacceptable, it calls for the big guns, don't you think?

I've only done it once and the biggest trouble was trying not to 'corpse' - I had no idea I was such a fantastic actress!  I was actually enjoying myself playing the part, and could have continued as long as it took, but our (former) project manager caved in after about 10 minutes and agreed that we could pay the remainder of the bill after the work was done, rather than "instead" of having the work done, which was their first position (we'd made the mistake of part-paying on the understanding they would complete their role as they were in a financial hole and we wanted to help).

Long story short: heating gone wrong; now sorted [thus saving hundreds of pounds of gas, and possibly the boiler running "dry" with disastrous results].

Left-hand right-hand?:

A.k.a. "Orange don't seem to have done a 'sanity check' on their databases".

We've been getting an awful lot of cold calls from Orange, trying to sell us internet access.

Because they're cold callers, they have a whole spiel to follow, and so don't get to the point very quickly [if I pick up any unknown caller, I will either practise my French (slightly mean, but they are choosing to waste my time, and I don't feel it too unfair if occasionally that works both ways?) or butt in and inform the caller that it's a holiday home and we are not French residents/tax payers, which causes over 90% of them to apologise and cut the call short to try to make a sale elsewhere], so it can be several minutes before they get around to asking if we would like internet access...

We have internet access...

Would we like to switch to a better deal?

Yes, that would be lovely...

Who is our current provider?

Orange...

Oh, erm, er...

Are you offering us a better rate?

Oh, no, we just want you to switch to Orange...

But we can't do that; we are with Orange already...

Are you sure you wouldn't like to switch to Orange?

[At this point we begin to suspect the conversation has gone off script...]

Yes, we would, if that will give us a better rate?

Ah, but it won't...

OK, then, thanks for your call...

[At that point I will politely say goodbye a couple of times and put the phone down, whether they are still talking or not, but David may sometimes play a few more rounds - too polite for his own good?  Or possibly because he's never worked a busy switchboard where 'timewasters' will lead to unhappy 'genuine' callers?]

Orange - get your databases synched why don't you?!

Long story short: Orange is wasting money trying to sell to existing customers [without offering a better tariff].

There IS such a thing as a free lunch!:

Last time we were in Tonnerre we went to Flunch for a quick lunch...

Except it wasn't!

Flunch had morphed into «Le Bistro», and our "quick" lunch took over two hours before we gave up on our meal, and went to the Auchan next door and bought dessert...  David missed out on his espresso [why would a supermarket have a coffee machine when there is a bistro on the premises?].

We were unsure [certain Capricorns among us need plenty of advance warning for sudden changes!] whether to go in, as we'd been expecting a lady dishing out various hot cuts of meat before you head to the help-yourself-to-vegetables counter (suits me, or I can have a ready-made-up salad plate), to select your side dishes, with fridges of water/wine/juice/dessert, etc.

Well, we thought we'd risk it: how bad can a bistro at a supermarket be?

Hah!

We were seated very quickly, but that's the last we saw of any kind of speedy service.  It took over 25 minutes to place our order - I think the waitress wanted to just take our drinks order and come back later (but I've successfully done a lot of blotting out the 2+ hours of my life I will never get back ;-) ) for our food order, but by then we were more than sure we 'didn't need any more time', so insisted we order then.

I would say "perhaps that was our mistake, and we ticked off the waitress", but she was offering the same 'service with a snarl' to everyone [apart from one table, that appeared to be friends of hers, who were seated long after us, ordered after us and got their food way before us; we weren't the only table to notice that!].  The refusal to make eye contact was noticeable, and other customers were commenting on that, as well as the delay/difficulty placing an order and the unfriendliness.

How long can it take to bring a pizza, a salad, a bottle of water and a 25cl carafe of wine-box wine?

I can't remember if it was just-under or just-over an hour, but seriously dude?!

I'm struggling to remember what I had...

[Free lunch, remember?]

But I think it was half a pizza and half a salad, and I'm sure it was lovely.  I seem to recall that David's salad - what didn't end up in his lap as it was slammed down in front of him [and loudly enough to cause several tables up to 20' away to look round (we did it when other people had their food slammed down in front of them)] - was very nice.

We did try to get the waitress's attention to order dessert and a coffee, and the bill at the same, but didn't persevere too long as by this time it was already later than we wanted to get to Auxerre (about 40 minutes away)...  [And we still hadn't had our puddings!].

We gave up, and went to the bar to pay.  We asked a couple of times if the cashier was sure the bill was right (it seemed very low, for waitress-service food), and the cashier assured us it was, so (given the very limited success of trying to attract the waitress's attention when we wanted something from her!) we paid up (sans pourboire*), and left!

Looking at the receipt later [we never saw a bill - we only spent 10 or 15 minutes trying to get it from the waitress before giving up] - free lunch - yay!  Ordinarily, I would go back and point out the mistake, but that felt like compensation* for a dreadful waste of our time [and David wearing part of his lunch, and no pudding, and, and, and], so we 'took' it.

So, free lunch.  :-)

We were lucky - a cheap [if not cheerful] meal, overall.  Would have happily paid a lot more to get service with a smile, sweets and coffee, but it wasn't our choice that that was unavailable.

We will be very interested to see if «Le Bistro» is still there when we're next in Tonnerre: the place was very full, but given how few people were receiving their food in a timely fashion, that could just have been a massive backlog?  And given the number of disgruntled comments we overheard/faces we saw, we're not sure how many local people will go back [and we always felt it was a place that it was mostly a local crowd meeting up with friends after doing their shopping]...

A review Yelp has suppressed [the only one I could find related to «Le Bistro», rather than the previous Flunch] was similarly unimpressed on a visit on a different day:

"Si vous êtes pressé, passez votre chemin ! On vous prend la commande boissons assez vite et on vous la sert pour vous fixer, puis vous attendez 20 minutes pour passer commande de vos plats qui n'arrivent que 55 minutes plus tard: dont une pizza pas assez cuite et dégoulinante. Patronne mal-aimable et pas un mot d'excuse de la serveuse pour l'attente, alors que la salle n'était pas remplie au tiers."

A rough & ready translation:

"If you're in a hurry, don't stop! You can order drinks quickly, then you wait 20 minutes to order your food, which won't arrive until 55 minutes later, with one pizza not cooked enough and trickling/oozing [I'm guessing not in a good-mozzarella-way?].  The boss was unpleasant and not a word of apology from the waitress for the wait; the room wasn't even a third full."

* Note to North Americans: in Europe [northern Europe certainly] it is not common to leave tips after a meal [it's becoming more common, as we follow more and more US examples]; the culture is different, and waitstaff are not being cheated when a tip isn't left, and are frequently surprised when a tip is left (especially in a more "informal" style establishment, even moreso away from tourist areas); tips are only left for exceptionally good service, or if a larger party has been particularly challenging [and often, not even then].  Further note: it was clearly the boss who was serving us, and waitstaff do not have unpaid-for food deducted from their wages in Europe; that is illegal.

Long story short:  If you're going to be surly and slam food down in front of customers who have been waiting ages, don't expect them to go to great lengths to fix your error with the bill...

Oh, and don't expect a tip!


OK, enough for now!