Quite an active week for us especially as the activity only
began halfway through the week.
Courtney arrived back safely from her two week stay with a
friend who lives in the Aude department of France. For those who know where
some of the French towns are, she lives near Carcassonne which is a completely
restored medieval walled city, and a huge tourist attraction. They seem to have
had a good time and she came back full of bounce and good spirits.
On Thursday Tilly arrived
to stay for a few days. As usual she brought with her a hurricane of
busy-ness. Always so much to do and no time to do it. However we did all manage
to fit in a lunch in Villeneuve, sitting in the slightly cooler ar of the
square. It is always so picturesque and at the moment they have the whole
square bedecked with pennants ad flags which makes it look even prettier. Of
course we over-ate and came back home again to recover. But that was not to be
as, a short while later a young lady came to the door and introduced herself as
our neighbours’ daughter in law from Canada, and added that we had been invited
for a drink. And to just come as we were. So off the four of us went and and
discovered that apart from the daughter in law with her two sons aged 9and 7
years, her parents were also there. We sat and chatted for a while out on the lawn at the
back of the house and suddenly our neighbour, Laurent, said …..”And now, you
stay for supper’. In spit of the fact that we had come empty handed, and our
four people added to their seven made rather a crowd for an impromptu meal, he
hear no protests and very soon we were all sitting down around a big table on
the front verandah, in the last of the sunlight. We enjoyed a delicious meal of
cold barbecued pork fillets, the remains of a roast chicken, salads and
scrumptious farmhouse style bread, followed by about eight different cheeses
and then melon slices or fresh nectarines. Certainly a meal fit for royalty and
company to go with it. I’m sure I have said this before, but aq charming couple
they are – so generous and hospitable.
One of the conditions of staying for a meal was athta we
could leave straight after eating as Tilly had a very early start next morning,
so at nine-thirty we made our excuses and said our thank yous and staggered off
to bed having certainly eaten and drunk far too much for one day. I have to
admit that I didn’t even hear Tilly leave at 4.30 the next morning but I so
admire her dedication. The early start was to attempt to miss some of the
weekend traffic on the way to her destination - Cannes. She called us later to say that she
had already arrived there so presumably the plan worked.
The rest of the weekend was spent helping Courtney sort out
her clothes for her return to South Africa on Tuesday. It is so hot here that
it is difficult to imagine that one might be very cold in SA, but she has
sorted out her wardrobe and I have said I will pack for her, which I will
probably do tomorrow. Tonight some of her friends are throwing a party for her
because she is flying off which more or less gives one a picture of the kind of
girls they all are. She is lucky to have blended so well with her fellow school
mates.
Our garden is at last beginning to show signs of repaying
the effort put into it, and although the rockery garden is a bit slow, and
surrounded by weeds at the moment, it is coming along at last. However the
veggie garden is Neels’ pride and joy. The sweetcorn is taller than Courtney,
who is taller than I am, and there are about 7 or 8 cobs beginning to form.
Yum! Yum! The tomatoes though are fantastic! I haven’t counted them but at a
guess I would say there are in the region of 15 to 20 fruits in various stages
of development. He is really thrilled to see how well the stuff grows. We are
now trying to work out how to install an outside tap to make watering less of a
mission. It would be quite a simple matter if we could just lead a hosepipe out
of the workshop (where the tap is), through a small window at the other end of
the area and down to the garden, but unfortunately, that little window looks
out over the neighbours garden and is about two metres from our boundary. We’ll
think of something, I’m sure.
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