Hope you had a good week.
This time last week I was walking my legs off in Versailles. Mon Dieu it is a huge chateau and grounds. This time of the year it’s relatively quiet and uncrowded, though the beautiful warm weather made sure that the gardens were filled with families out enjoying the sun. This week however the cold weather returned, thick frosts making everything sparkle and I’ve had to light the fire again in the evenings. Work on the garden has ground to a halt.
When I first came to France I was mad keen on growing my own vegetables and becoming self-sufficient. I turned about a quarter of my one acre garden into a potager (vegetable patch) and for a few years I did well. Then I got chickens and the writing bug. The chickens became escape artists and ate the vegetables and I started The Good Life France website and became hooked on writing which left me little time for seeding or weeding.
But this year – I’m back!
Of course I’m still hooked on writing and the blinking chickens are still escaping but I have a cunning plan. I’ll start small, fence off a bit (I’m intending to use my hazel trees for that) of the now overgrown garden and sew salad seeds. I’ve also invested in a new greenhouse. Unlike my second hand glass greenhouse (which I bought on Ebay UK for peanuts, dismantled in someone’s garden and carefully transported to France and resurrected), if we get big hailstones, the new plastic roof greenhouse should survive. The old greenhouse is now just a metal frame, the glass smashed to pieces by balls of ice the size of cricket balls.
Having visited Versailles I have been so inspired by King Louis XIV’s potager (his gardener took horticulture to new levels – growing lettuces in January and strawberries in March for instance), my simple plans are starting to get more complicated!
Any gardeners out there with top tips and hacks for easy vegetable growing – please feel free to email me (via contact form).
Wishing you a very bon weekend
Bisous from my pigsty/office,
Janine
Editor
ps For those waiting for details of the holiday in France comp, we’re still waiting for the lucky winner to reply to an email – hopefully I’ll reveal details next week. And, watch this space, we’ve got another brilliant holiday give away coming up…
pps Photo is my naughty chickens in the garden with Mark, my other half!
ppps I’m absolutely thrilled that www.thegoodlifefrance.com has made it into the top 100 travel blogs in the world list. The only dedicated to France website in the list making it the No. 1 website for France!
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