Elderflower gin

I was running out of time to pick my elderflowers, so didn't have much time to research a recipe.

I reckoned that getting a batch made was more important than finding the "correct" way to do it and missing the (rapidly closing) 'window' of opportunity.
So it was out this morning to pick the best of the remaining heads flowering, as they were rapidly going to seed.

I ended up with about 32 (but it could have been 33) heads that I checked for insects and then cut the flowers off into a Le Parfait jar.
Again, going for the "let's get it done" theme (and totally lacking in finesse), I drowned them in gin!

Someone reckoned that they should be decanted after three days, but I'm going to try & follow Hank Shaw's (Hunter Angler Gardener Cook) advice & let it "rest in my cupboard until the berries from the plant it came from turn ripe".

If anyone remembers me making fruit liqueurs last autumn, and is wondering how they taste, the verdict is "Yum". David selflessly sampled four bottles of damson gin and two versions of quarante quatre (plus half-and-half mix of both versions), and declared we could offer any of them to our friends!

Day 7

Or should that be "Day 6" - I can't make up my mind whether Day 1 counted [showing up, saying "Hello!", and coming back hours later to measure from a hole drilled in a block down 1m - still not sure if that IS a day's work!], and whether the bonus half hour on Saturday does either...

Still, we've had workmen on site now for 7 days, so I'm sticking with "Day 7".

On Day 7 we had an electrician run a few cables so that they will be covered in concrete when the builders lay the concrete tomorrow.

We've got two places where power sockets/telephone/TV are going to be located on the stone walls & the cabling needs to come up from the floor in a joint in the stone work.

We were going to have three places, but there was no other suitable joint, so we've compromised!

Still not sure what's going to happen with the absence of a plumber and needing to encase the waste pipes in the slab...

BUT, I'm reminding myself that we have a project manager whose job it is to worry about that sort of thing (and who knew about the problems with the plumber's health before he quoted for our job), so I'm going to let Jean-Marie earn his money!

[Maybe by tomorrow's update I will have eaten my words, but maybe (just maybe) not.]

Snap decision

Having dithered about for months trying to decide whether to get a French-style washing machine [narrow, top-loader] or an English one [wider, front-loader, many more programmes, half the price], we were no nearer to making a decision, until this afternoon.

We'd gone to Burgundy to try and source some stone for the sill under the French window in the stable [I think we're OK: M. Pasdeloup has enough for a small terrace (can be installed later) that's "nicely weathered" (a.k.a. needs pressure washing!), as long as we can find a way of getting it here... 1.8 tonnes is more than a Berlingo can carry!], and needed a "pit stop".

I was waiting for David & got sucked into browsing the 3-day sale of white goods; sometimes I think having an oven would be great!

I was also admiring a decent-sized fridge [one where tenants haven't broken all the door shelves & half the other shelving, so we could stand cartons of juice upright!], and went to have a look around the other side only to get 'sucked in' to washing machines.

There were 2 cheap ones: a "French" one and an "English" one... David found out from the salesman that the top-loader only spins at 600rpm, whilst the front-loader has choices of 400, 600, 800, 1000 & 1200rpm and they both use the same amount of water/are A rated. The front-loader takes 6kg to the top-loader's 5kg, so it was a pretty easy choice!

The downside: top-loader slightly narrower, but greater functionality seems more important that a bit of extra space in the laundry room...

Which really IS a laundry room now!

Luckily, we'd got some filthy boiler suits [pressure washing 150+ years of crud off beams & walls creates a fair amount of muck!], and grotty work clothes [tying a (very gritty) tarpaulin to the wall plate left so much residue in my hair it took 2 washes to get it to lather, so you can imagine what previously dirtied clothes ended up like] so we felt fully justified in doing a "test run".

So far, so good!

No leaks [yet], and given the colour of the water coming off, it seems to be working.

And given the special offer, we paid not much more than a second-hand one from the charity shop in Wallington would be, and half the price/less of a new one on display in the Auchan normal display of washing machines.

Fingers crossed it lasts a while.

Day 6

Bonus!

We were sitting there in our dressing gowns about 8am [after leaving Lydie's at 1am, we'd got to bed around 2] when the SMS van drove up...

Being the type to only go out in my nightclothes to take photos of my plants, I let David go and open the gate!

Alain & his colleague worked for half an hour or so & then were off: they have almost finished laying the plastic sheeting, reinforcing-rod mesh & polystyrene insulation.

We're not sure what happens regarding the plumbing wastes/missing plumber, but I'm sure I'll find out on Tuesday when the concrete is [due to be] poured...

Day 5, continued

Jean-Marie did show up eventually, by which time we'd spoken with M. Huguenot and sorted out almost all his queries regarding electrics: height of switches/wall lights, location of sockets, etc.

We do have a lighting plan [and this time it has been updated - SO much easier than my pale blue pen amendments!], but when faced with stone walls that we are keeping visible, things have to "give", and that includes placements of power points vs joints in the stonework.

He seems OK with it, and we're happy, so that was painless.The builders are at the stage where they seem to be rattling along.

They get all the "glory" bits - knocking down walls, building walls, breaking through windows, finishing around openings - it's all relatively rapid, with a lot to show for a day's effort.

David is really impressed by how fast they are going; I'm happy with progress, but being much more familiar living on a building site, know that all trades work equally quickly, but you only "see" the bits the builder, tiler & joiner do...

Plumbers, electricians (and especially anyone doing air-conditioning) tend to have so little to show on the finished project it can be easy to wonder why they seem to spend the longest time on site.

Answer: try living somewhere where they haven't spent much time on site, and you'll soon know why...

Just the one light and two sockets in a room brings more inconvenience than waiting the extra week or two to get an adequate supply of power!View from our bathroom window.

OK, so it's not a window yet, and it won't be a bathroom for quite a long time, but it's definitely a view!

We're off for apéros with Lydie & Laurent to meet Aude's friend's [Anna?] parents: we're wearing our other hats as "exchange visit brokers", so until the girls are safely back from Stuart & Tracey's we'll be keeping everything crossed that everyone gets there safely/gets on/has fun/gets home safely!

And I'm keeping everything crossed that with me on site everything will go smoothly with this phase of our renovation...

Day 5

9.35, and we're waiting for Jean-Marie for a 9.00 meeting...

Day 4

Half the floor is covered with compacted hard core [does big grit count as hard core?], and the builders are progressing well.

One small annoyance - they have taken down a perfectly good joist [but apparently it wasn't nailed down, and can be replaced]...

Day 3

A day with a digger, and the builders had excavated out for the floor...

AND we had a hole for the bathroom window.

Now THAT felt like progress!

Day 2

At the end of day 2 all the bricks forming the roof to the stable were down, and the wood.

Now THAT felt like a start!

Day 1

Well, you didn't expect anything to have happened on the first day, did you?

Don't be daft!

They did show up, and came back later to take a measurement [but as it was going to be a rough measurement for how far to take the earth down for the floor, I did a rough calculation & wrote it on the blocks & we went shopping!], so that counts as progress.

Update since my last post...

Hmmm, I haven't felt much like updating this blog with progress - mainly because it hasn't felt as though there has been much progress.

Hasn't stopped the bills, though!

The project managers are not covering themselves in glory - delays at their end have pushed the start date from beginning April to Monday of this week [7 June], and we've had a couple of days where they've needed our urgent response to fairly massive issues by lunchtime...

Hmmm [again], let me get this correct: you've sat on this for over a month, and now we have less than three hours to look at it, make a decision and get back to you?

Bearing in mind that France is an hour ahead, and the French are still pretty 'religious' about stopping for lunch at midday EXACTLY, and the urgency is caused by back to back holidays for best part of a month. I'm not happy!

AND then when we do get back to them with a very detailed list of comments and points to absolutely include/don't mention, they just go and ignore it!

Anyway, we've started now, and as far as we have good news, Jean-Marie's telling us to deal with the joiner will save us their fee on nearly a quarter of the budget!

Haven't mentioned that yet... [Probably a 2-month delay on passing that bit of information on?]

Number crunching

We've just [successfully] trimmed 40% off the estimates, so that we can do phase 1b at the house.

OK, so we're not going to have the bathroom (and a couple of walls), but we should end up with a habitable space...

Even if we can't use it in the winter!

[The external insulation to the side wall is one of the economies.]

We'll try & see how cold it is during January, and maybe we can sleep there - I don't mind a cold bedroom as long as I can bathe in the warm & have somewhere warm to be during the evening.

Snow, 2009

It felt like an early Christmas present having a coating of beautiful white snow to wake up to! Especially after the snow had made the journey down so "interesting".

We're kind of more used to the quickly-greying London variety - either than or it's already turned to slush!

When it's this cold and bright it's almost impossible to resist going for a walk. A dose of vitamin D, and the exercise all helps, and you feel good about making the effort.

It was so powdery, we were seriously considering buying snow-shoes! It's beautiful, but even trickier to walk on than sand!

We were amazed to see fruit still on the apple trees in M. Lorin's orchard. I had followed his instructions and helped myself in the autumn, but had left plenty of fruit that I couldn't reach.

I made a greater effort to get the damsons [for my damson gin => alchemy], but there's only so many apples one person can eat. They didn't last very long.

It amazes us to see the leftover grapes still on the vines - we would have thought the snow or frost would have caused them to drop off. But like the apples, they remain, looking like retro Christmas tree ornaments.

We have read of a wine than is only made when the grapes have been frosted on the vines. We suspect champagne grapes harvested at the usual time probably provides a better/safer income.

The pull up the hill behind the house makes me breathe heavily at the best of times; with the powder underfoot it seemed even harder - I wonder if that is why this is a favourite "photo opportunity"?

Possibly; but I still love the view from 2/3 the way up the slope!

The snow provides perfect camouflage for the sails of the wind turbines; you almost miss them at first. I know they are there, so am always looking for a good picture.

OK, I'll take a bad pic, on the offchance it might be alright. Either way, I'm looking forward to seeing dramatic clouds in juxtaposition with the turbines!

We saw this print in the snow: in my mind it's Snow Angel/Angel of Death. [I don't know how to notate that?]

It's a bird touchdown print - and does look like a snow angel, but knowing the only reason for a kestrel to come down like this is to pick up a tasty morsel, it's also an angel of death for the vole/shrew.

This was a view as we walked down the little road back to the village. [We'd had enough walking on the beautiful-but-hard-work powder and knew the road would be plowed!]

We ofter pass this way and think of the Alps - the little field higher up definitely looks like an alp (alpine pasture), and this scene reinforced that resemblance.

As it looked like a Christmas tree, it was also very Christmassy; just what we wanted!

Christmas 2009

It felt a magical Christmas: we had snow for almost the entire journey down; OK that bit wasn't great, but arriving to a covering of white, and seeing the Christmas lights outside the Mairie really set the scene.
We hadn't got the heating sorted out at that stage, so when we arrived the temperature in the house was about 8 or 9°C, but got up to about 12°C by the next morning.

M. Antoni's visit helped massively with that, but that was later...

We were incredibly glad when M. Monnier's men showed up in their van; and even happier when, after 20 minutes of trying, they managed to get the van up the road to our house!

We were worried that it was going to be "snow stopped play", but thankfully the poêle was installed and started off the warming up the house properly process.

We never did get it above 14°C, but given the lows of -19°C [and the stove!] we were fine with that.

I had planned to do the housework and set up all the Christmas decorations after David had gone back to London, but the Eurostar "wrong kind of snow" collapse meant that he stayed with me.

A bonus, and he got to help with putting up the decorations!

I can't believe that I didn't take any photos of the mistletoe I hung up in the imposte above the front door, but as I can't find any, I have to believe it.

Shame, everyone we speak to regards mistletoe as a menace, so they don't mind you helping yourself to masses of it; they'd see that as a service!

I think the enforced early start to David's holiday helped him to wind down much quicker/sooner than he would have done otherwise - he was still logging on to the office and working, but there was a 20 second commute and an hour's time difference in our favour had a massive impact on his sleeping.

Because there was so much snow about, we did our "shop" to last us the fortnight we were there and we had no need to leave the house...

Apart from to try and work off some of the food!

We had one idyllic walk that could have come out of White Christmas, and managed several shorter ones on less sunny days, and just relaxed, read and allowed ourselved to be hypnotised by the flames of the fire and the candles.

I did 'fess up to my autumn's liqueur-making activities, but only after a blind tasting; he did identify one, but not the other two!

David is looking forward to when they have matured a bit; although he's not keen on my plan to lay most of it down for years!

I explained that I could make some more next year, and if we have spare mirabelles, they could be "sacrificed to the cause"; he cheered up a lot at that idea.

We are looking forward to being able to invite guests, and offer them a glass of homemade damson gin...

In the meantime, posting this has got me looking forward to next Christmas already - and you don't often hear me say that before December!

Poêle

December 18th:

The woodburning stove (poêle) didn't arrive in time for our previous fitting date in November, so we were incredibly grateful that M. Monnier managed to fit us in before Christmas.

We had to rearrange our journey to arrive a day earlier, but it was worth it.

As we hadn't yet got the heating regulated properly, it was doubly worth it! [Even now it's above freezing it's still worth it.]

Bizarrely, the workmen showed up on the day they were supposed to, only about 20 minutes late (given the snow that practically counts as 'early'), and worked really hard until the stove was fitted. And didn't complain when we insisted that they check it with a level [Maria was right!]!

We were totally impressed with them, and the lovely job they did, and (of course!) the poêle.

And with that night dropping down to -19°C, it got a real "road test"!

The advice is to burn the logs 'hot' and let the fire go out, rather than banking it down for the night, but we had to keep it in till the heating got into double figures.

It's Norwegian, and all our neighbours agree that they know a thing or two about woodburning stoves and cold winters!

We thought people would look a bit askance that we hadn't chosen a French model, but everyone agreed that Scandinavian stoves are way better; that was a surprise, but we are total converts!

And we've noticed plenty of other people choosing foreign stoves, too.

Best Piece of Advice Award:

The Best Piece of Advice Award goes to Karen, for suggesting getting a side-loading model.

The side door doesn't let any ash out, and less smoke (if the fire is smoky), and when it's hot, you don't roast quite the same...

Brilliant idea!

Karen also gets the runner-up Best Piece of Advice Award for suggesting a hot-air blower for the shower room radiator.

When it's not cold enough to have the heating on but nippy enough that you don't want to take your clothes of and get wet, the soufflerie takes the chill off the air enough to get naked.

And like most females I like to be warm if I'm going to be nude!

Snippets I would have posted...

...if I hadn't been pretending to hibernate...

Probably far too long for one post, but I want to make a record of lots of things, and don't want to do numerous tiny posts dragged out over the next few weeks. I do plan to post some photos of the snow, installation of the wood burning stove and the Christmas candles, so there will be another few disjointed points before "normal sevice is resumed".

[In no particular order:]

Wild Boars:

We saw two families of wild boar: one was in the wood just outside the village, and the piglets looked very nearly fully grown, and the other was on an outing we took on Boxing Day - mum, dad & six tiny piglets.

WOW!

I know they have loads of them in France, but we have been looking out for them for over five years, and the closest we'd got previously was the chap who ended up in the body bag, which doesn't count in my book!

The little piglets are so cute with their ginger stripes!

Eurostar:

Apologies all round, blah blah blah, will learn from their mistakes, etc etc etc.

For once we didn't mind - the bonus days when David couldn't get back to the UK were like an early Christmas present!

AND our luck was holding - the trains broke down before David had gone back to London.

[Now him being stuck in London over Chrimbo would NOT have been popular]

And David's mum sent him a text to say the service had broken down, so he didn't even have the wasted journey to Paris/hotel stay/return to Troyes fiasco that he could have had!

Penknife:

Vs. Axe

I was hoping for an axe for Christmas...

[And certainly would have made use of it, had I received one!]

But I got a penknife instead! Actually, I love it - a special gardener's penknife, so thank you Santa!

That of course means I can go axe shopping; yippee!

Boiler going wrong:

Had a minor panic with the boiler...

We're loving being able to phone it up & say "stoke up, please", and arriving at a warm house!

[OK, technically we send an SMS saying "1111 bahk1 2", so it's not the full sci-fi robot experience yet, but sometimes in my mind it could be.]

For the first time since we've being using the "télécommande" we needed to turn the boiler down...

[When it was getting down to -19°C and highs of -2°C we didn't really need to turn the heating down; that was before M. Antoni had adjusted it, and it was struggling to get up to 14°C going all the time.]

Only it wouldn't!

Thankfully much nagging of David by Maria led to sufficient chasing of M. Antoni that he came back & waved his magic wand; we don't know what he did, but we could finally turn the boiler down to the low setting.

Bit of a panic, but glad it's fixed now (and hoping it stays that way)!

Broken tooth:

In September I finally had to go to the dentist having had toothache for 5 or 6 weeks. I felt really weedy, having to make an emergency appointment for a filling-gone-wrong, but Paul was very good about it.

I apologised for being wussy, and said could he just bung me in a temporary filling, and I would make a proper appointment when his diary was less crammed!

Well, the x-ray showed that there was a fracture in the tooth, and Paul said at least one half would have to come out; he wouldn't know if he could save the other half until he'd hoiked out the first chunk...

After asking if there was any way to save the tooth, and re-phrasing it a couple of times in case that gave me a better answer [in my defence, I think I was a bit in shock], it was still "No!", and "Let's get the first bit out and then see about the rest".

It's quite an odd [very slightly unpleasant] sensation having someone wrench out a tooth: there's no other way to do it, unless it's so bad you have to go to the dental hospital & they take away part of the jaw - NOT what I wanted!

Sadly, both halves of the tooth were beyond saving as the tooth had split completely, and the nerve no longer served either bit, so the other portion was dragged out, too.

When I went back to have the stitches out, I asked if I could have broken the tooth in Feb/March: I'd had really bad tooth pain for about a week [I felt as though a horse had kicked me in the face], and could NOT face letting a dentist any where near me, and then we got busy, and I forgot, etc, etc, etc...

Paul said yes, that sounds about right, and by the way I wasn't a wuss!

So, that made me pretty happy!

Chainsaw:

Very sad to lose the damson tree in the storm.

DELIGHTED to be able to use the chainsaw "properly"!

[So far we've only used it attached to the saw horse - that works brilliantly.]

That reminds me; did I mention we have logs?!

Well has water!:

When M. Antoni came to adjust the boiler the second time, he looked in the well, and we now have water - yay!

We "conveniently" forgot that you are supposed to pump the water for 12 hours [which is what caused it to run dry in the first place] before having a water quality test done; and no-one else has mentioned it...

And I'm willing to take the risk for flushing the loo and the cold shower water.

The basin has town water, so teeth cleaning is with treated water.

Pros: shiny hair - like rinsing with rain water. [However cold, I always finish with a cold rinse - wakes the head up nicely in winter!]

Cons: we don't seem to have constant pressure - so there's cold "patches" during showering!!

#LFMF:

When you're really tired, get a strong man to move the furniture!

I dragged a table top [we'd been emptying the stable to allow building work to start again, and had to store the "spare" furniture in the house"] away from the cupboard where we store the coffee maker.

[Site meeting of builders et al = coffee by the gallon!]

Thinking I wouldn't drag it back so I didn't mark the floor tiles, I lifted it to move it back into place...

And the edging and part of the top came away, whacked me in the face & left me bleeding and with a trout pout!

[Thankfully, as I've so far resisted botox, I didn't end up with that "mummified" look we sometimes see in Hollywood!]

Old furniture, made in sections may have weakened glue after a hundred or so years. #LFMF

#LFMF

Thankfully, it wasn't my fail!

The stories of plenty of contenders for the Darwin Awards on Learn From My Fail [#LFMF] suddenly made me stop and think: "Oh, I could end up writing about this on a Cheezburger website!", and then, "if I keep all my limbs/digits" and "as long as I don't bleed to death in the meantime".

It was as though a light bulb came on above my head: when you're so tired that it takes both hands to push in the 'release' button to start the chainsaw, it's probably time to call it a day!

We had a damson tree come down in the Xynthia storm, and it was in the middle of the hay meadow, so needed removing before the grass starts growing.

David wanted to save some of the seedlings, so was digging holes & transplanting seedlings.

[Once the grass grows we'd never have found them again, and then they would have got mown off with the hay.]

So I got to have first go with the chainsaw not fixed to the saw-horse, [David got to have a go later], and I started cutting off the branches & one of the trunks...

Well, thankfully, my belief that you never learn from other people's mistakes was superseded by an incredibly strong desire to avoid being in the news because my shaking arms had given way before the cut-off switch on the chainsaw kicked in!

The tree got moved anyway & I acted sensibly [rather than persevering to the bitter end], so a fantastic outcome.

I may not be as strong as I'm feeling, but the grey stuff between my ears seems to be working better!!

Update

We've got started with some more building work: on Friday we had a site meeting with various firms to price some of the remaining work for Phase 1.

We are calling it "Phase 1b", and T+B are calling it "Phase 2", but quite frankly we don't care as long as something happens!

A big consideration is the interpretation of the planning permission: we have two years in which to start the work, and five years during which we can finish it...

We have started the work in the stable inasmuch as there is a doorway broken through from the house [and blocked up] and there is a waste from where the loo will be connected to the drains.

Is this enough to count as having started? Does the fact that we have done the other work count as starting? Would they refuse to let us continue if we get it wrong?

We don't know [and don't want to find out - in the neighbouring village someone was made to knock down his newly-built house because it didn't have the correct planning permission], and don't want to take the risk; this way we are definitely covered either way.

AND get to have a spare bedroom!

Easing myself back in gently...

Having heard about shepherds in the Pyrenees who hibernate, I've spent the winter wondering how to go about this...

Is is possible for humans to hibernate?

And if so, how?

QI, it's not that I'm doubting you... BUT

Let's just pretend I'm emerging from hibernation!

We had a lovely Christmas at the house, with the newly-installed poêle and masses of candles; and a bonus few days of David-time.

[Thank you Eurostar, for your complete inability to learn from your "lessons" of past train breakdowns & handle a crisis! Thankfully, the Shuttle trains can handle winter weather, and we were the "right" side of the channel before the Eurostars went into melt-down (freeze-down?) & David couldn't get back to London!]

I might post some photos later - I'd gone a bit over-the-top with the candles, so everywhere looked pretty festive, and [obviously!] we had snow...

No longer running on adrenaline...

And boy, can I feel it!

I'm determinedly making the most of having nothing to do - which is lucky, as I'm not up for doing much...

I am sleeping, taking some exercise & getting fresh air, but not a lot else.

Oh, and the odd bit of 'scrumping'!

"Leftovers" - the grape harvest this year was pretty good, so there are lots of grapes left on the vines [the vignerons only pick up to their quota, and leave the rest]; after an extra month and a few frosts, these are much sweeter than when they are harvested, but very messy!

I've also eaten quite a lot of sloes [yay, that makes me feel tough: ask anyone who's eaten a sloe if they can eat a couple of dozen and still be smiling!], beech masts, a few apples, damsons and tiny peaches - gifts from neighbours or found in the hedgerows; nice time of year.

I've seen a red squirrel, a praying mantis, unexpectedly driven through Troyes [David's train was held up there, so I went to fetch him: got lost twice and asked for help from non-drunks at midnight; now can't imagine doing that (safely) in English cities from what I read!], ordered some logs to be delivered [for when we (should) get our woodburning stove the week after next], and seen installed the telephone control for our central heating.

Sadly, I'm not feeling terribly communicative at the moment, so I'll wish any readers well until I'm back to my usual self.