Monday! Oh, my!

     It was 10:00 last night before I realized that I hadn't written my Sunday blog post!  I hope you don't mind that I'm a day late (and many dollars short! ha!)  I had a busy weekend.  Well, truthfully, I wasn't the one being busy, but I had two tree trimmers (say that fast five times!) who spent eight hours Saturday cleaning all the dead branches out of my 100 year old elm in the backyard.  What a project! 

Before

Still before

     In the process of getting all those branches out, one of them caught on the cable line and stretched it to the point that there was no signal coming into the house.  And Comcast couldn't send anyone out til first thing Sunday morning, so I had no tv or internet for the rest of Saturday.  Which was no big deal as I love to read and enjoyed lots of peace and quiet til 7:30 Sunday morning when the cable guy came out.  Maybe that's what threw me off.  My entire weekend was a completely different schedule than usual. 

Elm tree after!

     The only work I, personally, did last week was to begin a raised vegetable garden in my backyard.  And now it will get a lot more sunshine since the elm was cleaned out.  Wish me luck with potatoes, onions, garlic, and carrots.  My neighbor is a horticulturalist/botanist and is beginning plants for all of us who are interested.  So I have her starting tomatoes, parsley, basil, and lemon verbena for me.  She'll let me know when it's time to plant them.  I love this time of year!
     I decided on those Sundays when I do not have much to report that I will share with you some of my favorite excerpts from books written by "expats" who have taken "the plunge" and landed themselves in another country.  The first of many books I have read regarding "the plunge" is Peter Mayle's delightful "A Year in Provence", a witty and warm-hearted account of his realized dream of owning a farmhouse in the south of France.
    
          "In the end, it had happened quickly - almost impulsively - because of the house.  We saw 
     it one afternoon and had mentally moved in by dinner.  It was set above the country road that 
     runs between the two medieval villages of Menerbes and Bonnieux, at the end of a dirt track
     through cherry trees and vines.  It was a mas, or farmhouse, built from the local stone which
     two hundred years of wind and sun had weathered to a color somewhere between pale honey
     and pale gray.  It had started life in the eighteenth century as one room and, in the haphazard
     manner of agricultural buildings, had spread to accommodate children, grandmothers, goats,
     and farm implements until it had become an irregular three-story house.  Everything about it
     was solid.  The spiral staircase which rose from the wine cave to the top floor was cut from
     massive slabs of stone.  The walls, so of them a meter thick, were built to keep out the winds
    of the Mistral which, they say, can blow the ears of a donkey.  Attached to the back of the
     house was an enclosed courtyard, and beyond that a bleached white stone swimming pool.
     There were three wells, there were established shade trees and slim green cypresses, hedges
     of rosemary, a giant almond tree.  In the afternoon sun, with the wooden shutters half-closed
     like sleepy eyelids, it was irresistible."

     Don't you just love it?!  And so, after reading this, I was determined to find my own little farmhouse in my own corner of France.  And I'm so glad you are all "coming along" with me on my journey.  Merci!