I never thought I would worry about compost, but I do!

Moving tall trees is actually a piece of cake when you are the assistant. I marvel at Mike's ability to dig holes, and his approach to lifting our willows, now 6 feet tall, with our new born confedence meant that the big and most delicate operation of deciding where to dig the new holes, and why was even more of a sinch...for me...We did take a little time to make sure this would be their last move and the ten year plan is still, to plan . We recycled the support posts from the pile of branches from the tree that fell in the winds a couple of years ago and that is a positive, in the past Mike has shot off to the shops for such things but now we really do benefit from thinking outside of the bank account and look for a reasonable alternative in stock, on site. We have been beach combing these last few days and apart from our regular two bags of pebbles we have gathered some good wood, I am visualising a pretend groin in the beach garden and we have decided to invest in four more railway sleepers to get the beach garden complete before May. Sarah has e-mailed me that a farmer in Insigny is still advertising sleepers at 13 euros each and if we go, can they come too? so we may just get a work party up for that project. I never really thought too much about water and where it fits into the hierarchy of needs and requirements in a garden but this last dry summer has made us acutely aware that you need plans and back ups to keep a garden like ours damp if not wet. We had a small roof pouring rain water all over the compost heaps and saw the error of our ways by putting the composting operation there. Guttering was installed to collect the water in a huge but and all summer that worked well, but in the winter when you don't need water, the but over flows and the compost gets wet so we found ourselves back to square one. Mike did however come up with a solution and introduced an overflow system from the but so during the winter we water the orchard and keep the compost dry.....I never thought I would worry about compost, but I do! Happy birthday to Blue for yesterday

frosty and snowman came to visit today

Still no safari, no pictures so I have contacted a mac man to see if he can help. EDF have written twice now to say the monthly electricity payments need to go up at least 25% so I called to say no way, so we stay as we are. I have no idea why EDF try it on as they never quibble about us not wanting to put the monthly payment up, very different to the UK.

Well, finally it snowed overnight and I couldn't wait to get out and tread some fresh powder and it was great. HOSS just went bonkers jumping in thick snow up to his belly and the whole atmosphere was magical. Morning constitutional over, I made coffee defrosted pain chocolate from the freezer and went straight back to bed and joined Mike watching French TV proclaiming it helps with the lingo but I just think we like sitting in bed with coffee and pain chocolate. We cleared the snow off the poly tunnel which is all about weight of snow verses stretch of plastic but it was a good job done and if the sun does make an appearance at least the tunnel will heat a little. In for the rest of the day, it is bitter and we deserve to stay in. see what tomorrow brings.