A bit of a relief.....

I don't complain and rant about things on this blog,

because I don't believe in passing on bad humour to my readers...

 

....however,

 

....with relief the temperatures are up a few degrees this morning!

For weeks we have had very cold and frosty mornings together with freezing fog.

The house has stayed reasonable with temperatures,

and we have not been lighting the wood burning Rayburn until after 5pm,

because the sunshine, which we have had most days, has heated everything up  a little bit.

 

However, the last two weeks we have had temperatures to minus 5C,

which I know is not that cold in comparison to other parts of the world,

but it is cold to us, spoilt as we are being, on a parallel to the Mediterranean.

And we have found ourselves getting irritable, tired, and generally miserable.

The Rayburn is just about coping with keeping the house off chill,

but we could keep it running for longer,

but we still have the wet season to get through,

so we need to conserve wood for that.

 

And yesterday morning it was freezing again.

But hooray!

By mid morning the weather started changing, and the freezing cold was lifted away.

I cannot tell you what a relief that was.

Simple things really.

A lift of a couple of degrees created quite a mood swing in us.

 

Living with the changing seasons makes life very interesting,

but really, this very long spell of freezing weather has been a bit much,

the sleep of hibernation being the driving need,

which means that things which ought to be done don't get done.

 

On the subject of the Market Garden Project:

Lester is collecting the wood, for the raised beds in the courtyard, from the local wood mill this afternoon. Six beds to be made and filled with camel and cow manure.

And to stop our heads from going round in a spin, we are taking each step at a time.

The seeds have been ordered for the back veg plots. These are the 'normal' vegetables, nothing fancy.

The raised beds are going to have the more unusual salad vegetables grown in them, with the emphasis being on baby veg, no F1 seeds, just heritage and heirloom seeds.

 

How we are going to make the step between growing for ourselves and growing for the public is still a mystery to us. How are we going to actually sell the salads and vegetables, ......well, that step will arrive when it is meant to.

We were having a 'this is too big a project for us' moment the other day, and arriving in my head came 'Le Jardin de Salad', (the Salad Garden) which is now the name of the project, and will have 'vegetables in season, fresh herbs, range of salads, all ancient varieties and bio, (or something like that)' tagged on to the title.

The arrival of the name was sufficient to lift our spirits, and push us on again.

I have no doubt that further inspiration will come when it needs to come.

Such trust in the Universe bailed me out of many pot holes in my life,

got us here to France, walked us through the renovation of the house, and the setting up of the smallholding, and lots of other things too numerous to mention, so I am holding fast to the trust that we shall get Le Jardin de Salad off the ground.

 

I hope.

 

...... and a snippet from the blog I wrote on Friday January 4th 2013:

 

'So it came to our afternoon 'stretching of our backs' in the bedroom caravan, which some people may call a 'siesta' but I think a siesta is a state of being whereby one drops the eyes shut for a space of time. 'Stretching of our backs' is just that: giving our spines a rest from the hours of sitting working at our PC's. Our eyes remain open, although may have a momentary droop, but definitely do not shut completely. Lester will be listening to his Ipod, and I will be drifting about in my thoughts, or reading French, or we will be having a family pow-wow. 

As soon as I was lying prone on the bed, straightway into my mind came 'HOPE' again. And this time the letters of the word became split up: 
H is Happiness: that living in hope will bring long term happiness. 
O is for Opportunities: that living in hope will not allow for any opportunities to pass you by. 
P is for Prosperity: not necessarily with copious amounts of money, but a richness of self. 
E is for Excitement: which is how you are going to feel if you live in HOPE because you will be living your life, not sitting on the sidelines and watching the days of your life pass you on by. 

But like all things, being Hopeful requires effort. No gain without pain, as the saying goes. What I mean is, that it is hard at first to learn to be Hopeful. But with practice, it becomes easier. 

I have been thinking of these words often over the two days. When I push them out, they pop back into my head. So I pass them on to you as well. I have definitely become filled with more optimism, something which had become drizzled away with the effort of making a fresh start in somebody else's country, and I feel my feet stepping lighter as a result. What I have been doing to achieve this state of being, is every time I have a worrisome or negative thought drift into my mind, I turn it around on itself by Hoping for a good outcome. 

I have found that the HOPE word is a very powerful assistance in lifting one's spirits. As I put on my Facebook page yesterday: to HOPE is to be a travelling-forward-in-life person. But to be without hope, and therefore HOPELESS, is to be a going no-where person.'

That's all for now,

off to get some lunch.

 

Vx