At the end of last week’s blog, I said that the pool terrace should be complete, the preparation required to sow grass seed should be complete and we may even have sown some areas and started the watering.
As often occurs with my predictions, not all of them transpired !!
That said, the pool terrace has been progressed (there was a bank holiday and our tiler had car problems) to the point that she has started laying the floor inside the pool house. It is looking good already and we think will look amazing when complete. The areas she where she has already grouted (do you call it that for paving?!) look fabulous.
Our electrician has also had a couple of days work too so we now have cabling being installed throughout the building and, more importantly, we have the pool house, and pool, attached to the grid – a major step forward! While we still think it extremely unlikely that the pool house will be complete for the summer, we are increasingly encouraged that the pool itself may be functioning and, with power, things like the filter will work!
While it has remained dry, our efforts have been continuing to level and de-stone what will become the lawn.
I started clearing behind the pool house where we have always had lots of Japanese knot weed and Himalayan Balsam. With all the earth works which have happened this has now been liberally spread throughout the garden and is starring to sprout where it hasn’t been before. Only the smallest piece of rhizome is needed to sprout into a new plant which probably explains why it is so invasive.
There is lots of fear about Japanese knot weed and myth about what it can do. When we arrived at Kergudon much of our back boundary had knot weed growing but, over the years, we have greatly reduced the area it is growing and now the area behind the pool house has been levelled and I will start to mow it, this will be reduced further.
We have been amazed at how much space has been ‘created’ behind the pool house, had we known how much there is we would have built the pool house closer to the talus! Once that is grassed we will be able to make good use of it for more storage.
We have managed to get to the point that the entire lawn area has been prepared, which is the one thing we predicted should be complete and is. It remained dry all week until early afternoon yesterday and as we finished the last few square metres the first drops of rain we have had for weeks started to fall.
As it has been so dry, we haven’t yet sown any seed as we would not be able to water all of it sufficiently. The forecast suggests that we will have a little more rain over the next 3 days before another dry spell but I hope to be able to get the seed down either tomorrow or Tuesday. However, despite how dry it has been, I will need to mow before I seed as, where there was grass before, a lawn is trying to grow.
The raking and rolling remained as dull as before but we didn’t have an alternative task to break it up as, whenever we weren’t preparing the lawn, we were preparing the accommodation for guests.
France has more public holidays (jours fériés) than the UK but, unlike the UK, rather than have the holiday on the closest Monday, the jour férié is always on the actual day. Therefore, if it falls on a Saturday or Sunday it effectively doesn’t happen.
However, that is compensated by ‘doing the bridge’, If the jour férié happens on a Tuesday or Thursday, lots of people link the public holiday to the weekend by taking leave on the Monday or Friday and making a long weekend. This year May Day and VE Day (both holidays in France) fell on a Thursday so we have had lots of guests stay for extended weekends so we have been busy changing over the accommodation.
Today, when it sadly wasn’t raining, we had one of our Sunday strolls and walked an inland circuit from Loqueffret. The commune is located at a relatively high elevation which affords amazing views over the central Brittany landscape. This circuit also takes in the pretty village of Saint Herbot and its amazing church – which, unfortunately, seemed to be undergoing some renovation when we were there.
Next week’s focus is sowing grass seed and encouraging it to germinate as quickly as we can!!
Kenavo.