This time of the year

Seasons

 

In my mind, everything, well almost everything has a season. I grow my crops in the garden every year, and what we eat is seasonal. Supermarkets have ruined that concept haven't they? I tend to look forward to eating my first new potatoes or strawberries. I have visited those countries where in the middle of their winter you are running around in a tee shirt and shorts and in the summer it's too hot to venture outdoors, not for me I'm afraid, admittedly  it gets a bit warmy here in summer, but our winters can get bitterly cold, it's been forecast that this winter here will be the coldest for 20 years and it was minus 20 deg. a few years ago. No water and no electricity for a week, that was interesting. Apparently the Tudors had an expression which I am drawn to  - " By the tits of Holy Agnes, it's freezing. "

 

BUT we have a remedy,

 

 

 And that's it ! bit of a jumble, but with the help of this machine

 

 all cut up and stored under cover ready to feed the big black fire breathing monsters in our house. There is no gas available in our neck of the woods, we buy bottle gas for the cooker, but I'm not going to heat our whole house at those kind of prices. That pile in the garden is about half our winter requirements ( 8 cubic meters) the next 8 will be delivered as soon as I have finished cutting this lot.

 

 

big black fire breathing monster and pussy cat

 

 

The mornings around here can get very misty, due to the fact that we live very close to a big river, we have a local airport at Bergerac, probably only about three flights a day, but one of them on a Wednesday, arrives early in the morning. Last week when a friend of mine went to pick up his daughter from the airport, he looked on at the descending  noise, ( couldn't see the plane ) until it touched down about three quarters of the way along the runway, only to hear the engines going to full thrust and the thing almost stood on it's tail and took off again circling the airport for the next hour until it was safe to land. No automatic landing system in our little airport obviously. My daughters are coming for a visit soon, I don't think I'll bother mentioning that little incident to them.

 

Loads more rubbish to follow in the next episode, I think I must have a dose of verbal diarrhea !