This week has been focussed on 2 activities – when we have been working – progressing the floor in Grange’s games room and planting the yews that I showed in last week’s blog.
I say when we have been working as the week started slowly being Easter Monday and the Marché sur l’eau. However, before that, we managed to stage our own Easter Egg Hunt for the children of the 2 families we had staying with us for Easter. As I mentioned last week, Easter Sunday itself was too wet to hold the hunt but, thankfully we were able to do so on Monday.
I learned over the week that the French don’t have an Easter Bunny who hides the eggs but that it is the church bells which leave the eggs in people’s gardens. Their story goes that the church bells, which don’t ring between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, travel to Rome to be blessed returning on Easter Sunday laden with eggs that they leave in families gardens on their way back to the churches.
The four children we had staying with seemed to enjoy the event – and amazingly found all of the eggs we had left around the orchard. Perhaps it will get harder as the plants we have put in the ground over the last few months grow!
A decision had been made to move the Marché sur l’eau from the barrage by the lac du Drennec to the Salle des Fêtes in Saint Cadou owing to a poor weather forecast. However, while the market was as busy as it always is, the weather remained kind and the rain didn’t show!
Sadly it did on Tuesday which meant that I was able to continue with the floor in the Grange games room. As the room is still full of DIY equipment it has meant that we need to lay the floor in stages. I continued to lay floorboards almost up to the doors and started to add the varnish.
I have managed to lay 2 coats so far which will help protect the floor before the weather improved sufficiently for me to start planting the yews. Up to this point I have planted 40 of the 100 we have and are about 2/3rds of the way around the boundary that we want to focus on. The majority of the time is taken pulling out the bramble, couch grass and other weeds that have grown around the hollies and self-set yews which already exist with the planting itself being relatively quick.
We are really pleased with the plants we have bought as the roots seem very strong which, hopefully, will mean that they will establish themselves quickly and produce a strong, thick hedge in a relatively short time – although we appreciate this is still likely to be up to 10 years.
The weather has improved during the week sufficiently for me to be able to mow the lawn for only the second time this year – but it does make it look great.
Unfortunately I also had to spend a couple of mornings away from work. Thursday morning I had to drive to a DIY store in Quimper as they seemed to be the only one who had supplies of the volige planks we have been using for the Grange project. Just as I needed the final 50 planks (of the 760 total) for the whole project our usual DIY store has discontinued the planks we have used and have changed the dimensions! At least I have what I need and can finish the job.
A second morning I had to take the car to Sizun for a service and then travelled into Landivisiau to collect a tree fern that the supermarket had decided to give us. The reason for this is we were persuaded by the supermarket’s advertising to buy a tree fern for 8 euros whose photos showed a trunk of about 40 centimetres. However the 8 euro fern had no trunk at all but those in the picture were for sale for 69 euros! Prime misrepresentation.
David started a conversation with the supermarket on Twitter expressing our disappointment and, after a couple of weeks, they offered to give is a 69 euro tree fern as a goodwill gesture. The more expensive is in the foreground and the €8 fern is planted behind.
We are obviously really pleased but it frustrates me that it is only when a firm is ‘shamed’ on a public platform such as Twitter that they take any action. We have seen the same a couple of times when they just ignore a private conversation by email! Lesson learned – shame publicly early! Something to plant in the coming week if the weather remains as good as it has been in the last couple of days – if not more flooring to be laid and many other things …
Kenavo.