Stress management

No, not us. We're fine; having a whale of a time, in fact.

But our grounds and our plants aren't. If they had blood pressure, it would be through the roof.

For the last couple of weeks we've had temperatures of 36 degrees or so most days (and for the last week they've not dropped below 22 at night); this month so far we've had just 2 hours of rain, all at once. And this year, our rainfall is running at between a half and two thirds of what was once considered 'normal'. Same thing last year. Compared to what friends in Spain have experienced so far this year, it may not be much to write home about.
But ...

... this is the Pyrenees. The ecosystems here have developed in response to a certain climate - if you look at detailed meteorological  maps, Grillou sits almost exactly on the borderline between Mediterranean and Atlantic climatic influences, giving us a healthy mixture of hot sun, clear unpolluted air, gentle breezes and enough rain to keep Ariège that amazing green colour that so struck us when we first came here one September many moons ago. When we started to look for the place to live, we discovered that once you went over the border into Aude the summer greens turned to browns and quickly found that our hearts were here, with the best of both worlds.

Now, as Bob Dylan, said, the times they are a'changin'. This is our lawn field today:

Trees are shedding their leaves as if it were November:

Lots of shrubs - the same shrubs that have struggled to re-establish themselves after the Big Freeze in February, when we had temperatures of minus 18 or lower for 2 weeks - are doing the same:

Who have thought that I'd have to spend half of yesterday raking up leaves?

The several-hundred-year old oaks that stand guard over our land are seriously stressed out, and we quite literally fear for their lives if we're now seeing the beginning of a new and very different pattern of extreme climatic conditions. And here's a sad sight: one of our wild cherry trees completely uprooted itself a couple of days ago and is now leaning at a precarious angle - the ground is so dry that the entire root ball has upended. The only question now is do we let it fall, or cut it down?

It's the same story in the woods around us, and we're acutely aware of how tinder-dry everything is - one stray spark could start a wildfire which would spread like - well, wildfire. We've not quite banned barbecues yet, but we do make sure that everyone who's using one has several buckets of water to hand ...

Our stocks of rainwater ran out a long time ago so we're having to resort to the hose to keep things alive, like the multitude of colourful pots that greet you on arrival:

And the roses, which by now should be preparing for their second flush:

The good news is that we're having a fantastic crop of tomatoes that taste as though they've been grown in a hot Provencal climate. And then there are these - would you believe that this vine is only 2 years old?

We and our guests have moved on to Spanish time - dinner has moved itself slowly forward to around 9.30 as it's just too hot to think about eating before then - and we're all making good use of the shady 'Zen' terrace:

The heat is considerably less intense today - only 27 degrees at the moment - and there are rumours - only rumours, mind - of a little light drizzle tomorrow. Then we're back up into those thirties again ...

And then we're into September and October, which traditionally are Ariège's most beautiful months - warm, golden, balmy. But who knows, this year?

Somewhere, under the rainbow

Suddenly at sunset this evening our world went golden.

I ran outside with the camera. It had been raining for most of the day; it was still raining, but soft and warm. The cloud was thin and gauzy, and the rays of the sun lit everything up like a Photoshopped soft focus image.

Turning back towards the house, I found the biggest rainbow I've ever seen arched right over Maison Grillou.

As I watched, the light changed colour before my eyes.















And then changed again ...

And then the heavens opened and the rainbow faded. I ran upstairs to catch the last moments of the sun.

And then it was gone.

But at least I now know what's at the end of the rainbow.

We are.

Ponting

It's best, I've learned in the five years we've been here, not to bank on getting too much done in May. And I'm not talking about the weather this time.



Actually, I'm not talking about yoga either ... :-)

May is the month of the ponts. Well, no, let's take a step back first: May is the month of the public holiday. Four of them, to be precise: the Fête du Travail (Labour Day), Victoire 1945 (Victory in Europe Day), Ascension and Lundi de Lundi de Pentecôte. Depending on the date of Easter it usually works out at about one a week. That's not half bad in itself.

But when a public holiday happens to fall on a Thursday or a Tuesday, the French like to faire le pont, or bridge the gap, by taking off Friday or Monday as well. In fact it's become so common to faire le pont that even if the holiday falls on a Wednesday people will be still ponting all over the place. Many small enterprises and commerces - and even schools and public services - shut down altogether on pont days so that you have to keep a weather (oops - sorry. I'm not really obsessed with the weather, honest) eye on the calendar if you've got Things To Do. I made the mistake of not doing that last Monday and found half the places I needed to go closed, and the other half teeming with ponting families determined to spend their buckshee day off in a queue ....

There is a kind of trade off though. When a public holiday falls on a Saturday or Sunday, so be it. There's no compensatory day as there is, for example, in the UK - so when last Christmas and New Year's Day both fell on Sunday, workers here got no time off at all. And let's face it, who wouldn't prefer time off in May to mid-winter?

Next Monday will be another pont, as will Friday of the following week. So that's three four day weekends, followed by the three day Pentecôte (Ascension) weekend at the end of the month. Now if we could only have some half decent weather ...........

Dear Evelyne Dhéliat ...

Have you no shame? Look, if I'd wanted wind, I'd have lived in the Aude. And to be honest I don't really care if we've only had 50% of of normal rainfall over the last 12 months - I just can't be doing with these sudden onset squally showers that you keep sending my way, every day at random intervals, usually when I'm in the middle of something outside.

Maybe you haven't realised what the stakes are here, so let me be upfront with you: I've got a seriously big job on outside, preparing the garden for us and our guests to hang out in this summer. I've got chairs and sunbeds and tables to get out, clean, oil and generally get looking good again. I've got hammocks and parasols to set up. I'm trying my damnedest to paint the floor of the covered eating area, but you keep sending me winds that blow trillions of blossom petals right onto my wet paint. (Um - this is Ariège. We live in the Couserans. We don't get wind).

I've got a potager to finish digging over and plant up so that we don't all starve this summer but your rain is keeping my soil too wet. I've got seedlings to tend, but your winds keep blowing my mini greenhouse over. I've got hundreds of flower plants ready to fill all the pots that line the front of the house but your low temperatures are keeping the soil too cold. And we've got nightingales singing, but it's just too bloody cold to sit outside and listen to them.

And look, even as I'm writing this, there's Big Rain - or is it hail? - blowing horizontally outside my window. And I have a thermal vest on.

All right, I accept that you've probably been put under some pressure to keep the weather miserable this month because of the presidential election. And yes, I realise it would be improper if everybody went off on holiday instead of staying at home and voting. But I'm sorry, I've really had it with April now. And if I have to wait another 2 weeks before it gets better, I'm afraid I shall have no alternative but to worship a different weather god in future.

PS Just wondering, given your current track record .... have you by any chance got anything to do with the three major things that have gone wrong with my car this week? Because not only is the weather crap, but I'm confined to barracks and when the work's done next week will be several hundred euros poorer to boot .....


Evelyne Dhéliat is the weather god(dess) from TF1, the French TV channel. She is France's favourite weather person, much loved by all (but especially by men. She's 63, intelligent, blonde and looks 43).

My dog's got Cold Tail!

Yesterday morning, I noticed that Noodles' tail looked a little odd - it was sticking out almost horizontally from his body for a few centimetres, then dropping down limply. And he wasn't wagging it, which is most unusual - he's the waggiest dog who's ever owned me as a pet, with a great line in 'helicopter' wags, generally when he wants something :-) As the day wore on, it became more pronounced, and he became more and more bemused, and more and more depressed, periodically looking round behind him with a disgusted-of-Rimont expression on his face.

The previous day had been the first day of the thaw, and our 30cm of snow was gradually reducing to the point where he could actually run across the nearby fields instead of disappearing under a pile of the white stuff. On his early evening walk he'd disappeared for almost half an hour, eventually coming back completely exhausted and flopping down into the snow to recover. He does this from time to time, usually when he's got an excess of energy to burn off; he knows the land around here better than we do and generally comes back from a direction entirely different from that in which he set off ... And after two weeks of enforced walk restriction from bitterly cold temperatures and thick snow, he had energy!

I wondered, naturally, whether he'd injured his tail somewhere on his jaunt, although there were no obvious signs of injury elsewhere; in fact I feared that he'd broken it, although he didn't appear to be in any pain. Before packing him off to our local vets though I Googled 'floppy dog tail' ... and lo and behold, found the answer. Noodles was displaying the classic symptoms of Cold Tail, also known as Limber Tail, Broken Wag and Dead Tail. Apparently it's a condition still unknown to many vets, brought on sometimes by vigorous exercise, sometimes by exposure to cold, wet weather, and sometimes by nothing obvious at all (too much tail wagging, maybe?). No treatment necessary - it resolves itself in a few days, with warmth and rest (rest? Huh!). Phew.

But how pathetic does he look! (He's banned me from taking a picture of his tail ...). The good news is that this afternoon there are already some signs of improvement, and even some miniscule wags. It'll be helicopters again before you know it.

A (snowy) day in the life ...

The good news: the snow plough came up again this morning, right up our drive.

The bad news: the snow plough came up again this morning, right up our drive.

The tractor driver got the location of the hard-packed drive under the snow completely wrong and has dug up the grassy verge with all that was planted in it. Not only that, but he had the plough set too low and has bulldozed around 5 centimetres off the surface of our driveway and left huge piles of hard core at either side. Not only that but he's turned the triangular area by our post box, where the postman turns his van every day, into a half-metre high muddy bank, in the process preventing our neighbours down in the valley from passing until it's been cleared. All the work that I did on the drive this summer - creating nice grassy borders, planting along the edges of the driveway, cleaning and de-mossing the compacted gravel that forms (formed) its surface, painstakingly reshaping it with an edging tool - is b*&&ered, in just 3 minutes.

We are not amused.





It's stopped snowing (for now), but this morning it was minus 10 just outside, and similar temperatures are forecast for another week. Our main road, like most roads in the department, is still impassable without chains because although they've been cleared they're impossibly icy, and there are reputedly more cars to be seen in ditches than on the roads ....

Still, we're promised a hot afternoon: 0 degrees Celsius. Shorts and tee shirts then.

I'm just staying in and I may be some time

For the last week or so Metéo France has been regaling the best part of France with dire warnings that winter is, at last, arriving - a period of extreme cold, set to last at least 10 days. We, here, are getting off lightly with lows of 'only' around minus 10 degrees Celsius, while the east will shiver at minus 20 (and I can believe it - we once spent January in a remote house high in Haut Beaujolais where we were completely snowed in for over a week in temperatures of minus 25 ....).

This is what I can see out of my study window as I write:

It's still snowing, and the flakes are getting bigger. This is 'proper' snow - light, fluffy and pretty - unlike the wet stuff we had on Sunday. Only thing is, not a single weather forecast so far is admitting that we're having it! Although, amazingly, we will get snow ploughed here if it gets thick, given the extreme low temperatures we're likely to get 'iced in', possibly for some time - there's a steep hill at the end of our track that becomes a skating rink under frozen snow and even our snow chains would be unlikely to grip. Hey ho. All part of the joys of living in this wonderful spot.

Today is La Chandeleur, or Candlemas; in North America it's Groundhog Day. Here in France La Chandeleur is synonymous with the mass eating of pancakes. But it's also, according to legend, a key day in determining what the weather's going to be like for the next 6 weeks.

« Si fait beau et luit Chandeleur
Six semaines se cache l’ours »

On this day, the bear wakes up from her winter hibernation and pokes her nose outside her lair; if the sun shines, she turns tail and goes back to sleep for another 6 weeks because she knows that sun at Chandeleur means that the last half of winter is going to be long and hard. If, on the other hand, it's cloudy, she knows that spring will arrive early and that it's safe to come out of hibernation. Similar legends focus on the marmot (hence 'groundhog'), who will only come out of hibernation on 2 February if she can't see her own shadow.

What, I wonder, are they all making of the weather today?

A December violet

Over the last month we've continued to enjoy extraordinary autumn weather here at Grillou: 160 hours of sunshine - over a third up on the average - and only three days where the sun didn't put in an appearance, along with balmy temperatures often in up the twenties. It's not unusual, at this time of year in particular, for the Pyrénées and their foothills to have much warmer and clearer weather than the rest of south west France, including the Med, and for Ariège to be leading the way temperature-wise. But looking at the weather stats for the last fifty years or so and talking to local people, it seems as though the pattern here is shifting quite noticeably towards warmer/dryer. Which if it continues (and the forecast is for just that: I've been looking at Metéo France's long term predictions for 2050 and 2090 and even the most conservative scenario gives us an increase in the average temperature of 3.5 degrees by 2070) is going to have huge repercussions on all sorts of aspects of life - and wildlife - here.

We're seeing that on a micro-scale here at Grillou. During the last month we've had great tits and blackbirds singing at full pelt; butterflies still swarming round the buddleia; marigolds, geraniums and nasturtiums still in flower; spring primulas bursting into flower too. At the end of October we planted several tiny bare root rose bushes: already, they've all put out huge numbers of shoots and leaves; some our established rose bushes have bloomed again in their fourth flush of the year. The yucca plant has flowered. We're still eating tomatoes and basil from the potager. Some of the birds that normally migrate - our blackcaps, for example - have stayed put. Our several-hundred-year old oak trees are showing signs of stress.

And ... the violets are coming out. Normally we'd expect them at the end of February. But yesterday - the first day of December - we had a small carpet of them. Hmm.

On the rocks

No, I haven't been taken to hospital having been run over by a mad monk in pyjamas (as my mother used to say with her cheeks sucked in when yet again I'd failed to make the Sunday evening duty phone call). I am still here. It's just that there don't seem to be enough hours in the day to work'n'eat'n'blog. How do other people do it, I wonder?

I notice that a month ago I was writing about our Indian summer. Well, it's still here. Admittedly the sun took a couple of days off last Friday and Saturday, but otherwise it's been shining from a cloudless sky almost constantly; if it weren't for the shortening days I swear you'd not know it was mid-October. Metéo France tells me that last month we had a total of 227 hours of sunshine, considerably up on the average (although the same thing happened last year too ...) and only two days with no sun at all; this month we've already had well over half our average monthly quotient, with not a single day without sun. We're still eating dinner outside, which is something of a record for mid October .... even the birds are singing: today I heard a blackbird, a blackcap and even a great tit. It's all just much too good to miss, so we've thrown much of the inside work to the winds for a while and removed ourselves lock stock and barrel outside, where we're doing our level (or, in the case of our garden, our non-level) best to catch up with some of the general clearing and cleaning work that we failed to do when we were flat out inside (aaaargh .......).

The focus at the moment is the rocky area in front of the house, which is in effect a natural rockery, albeit long since disappeared under tonnes of ivy and moss. It feels as though I've now spent at least half my life clearing the rocks: it's a long, long task, involving a complicated sequence of clippers, scrapers, wire brushes and plastic brushes, together with a mixture of elbow grease and painstakingly minute work in the endless folds and creases of the rocks (good mindfulness practice!). But it's just sooooo good to be working outside on the earth again, which after all is one of the things we came here for. And we've uncovered rocks we didn't know were there - our own mini-Pyrénées.

This is what we inherited when we moved in over 4 years ago:

And this morning ....

We're not finished yet (actually I'm not sure that 'finished' will ever be a word that can be applied to Grillou ....), but we've sure as hell come a long way. And when we finally get some rain, we can start planting.

The weather's set to continue unchanged until next Monday. Alas, I won't be in it. From Friday till Monday I shall be workshop-ing in London. Do I want to go? No. Much as I enjoy the work, I simply have no appetite for being in the UK. Ah so.

Ark wanted. Must be waterproof and in good condition

This is seriously not funny. It has now been raining most of the time for three weeks, and all of the time for three days. And it's cold. People are lighting wood burners and putting on heating.

Hello? This is, if I'm not mistaken, July. We call that summer, in the trade. Holiday time. Is someone having a laugh?

According to Metéo France it's all because the Azores anti-cyclone has settled in 'the wrong place'. Well, if you happen to be reading this, Azores anti-cyclone, would you like to get off your backside and move? Like, now? Please?

Must go. Off to weed the paddy fields.

On heat

It's hot. And that's official.

Like the rest of the country, we're in the midst of a heatwave: temperatures have hit 38 degrees in the shade over the last two days. A couple of cooler days forecast for Wednesday and Thursday, and then more hot and sunny weather; this will, we're told, be the pattern for the rest of the summer, with temperatures distinctly higher than average. Good news for the ratatouille bed in the potager which was planted so late: it's already showing signs of catching up.

A treat yesterday, when the sun was blazing down in the middle of the day and the thermometer was showing 52 degrees in the sun: quite by chance I watched our baby black redstart leave the nest. He (or she. Here we go again) fluttered down onto the grass, looked around, and then bowed several times. Redstarts, if you haven't seen them, bow all the time, like robins only more so; I just didn't expect them to start so young. They're also intensely curious birds: an hour or so later I found him sitting in the brico shed calling furiously for food.

You could say that the heat is slightly less good news for us as we continue to clear the rock garden, but hey - what's a bit of sweat when you're having fun? And it does mean that during the hottest part of the day we get to take refuge inside and get on with all the interminable finishing jobs, like framing pictures and hemming curtains and sorting out all the kitchen equipment for L'Atelier. (Never, dear renovator, ever underestimate just how long this stage will take you. Why is it that I could tile an entire shower in the time it takes to frame and hang just one picture? And that's without the arguments about whether there's a speck of dust under the glass or whether it's straight or not). But we are getting there (even if - sigh - the water still isn't connected: plumber has been, plumber has gone, plumber hasn't finished, plumber is coming back. Just don't ask when).

It's been a particularly frustrating couple of weeks in that I've been getting lots of contacts from some really interesting people - mostly readers of this blog, as it happens - who've wanted to come and stay this summer, and because of everything you already know about I'm still having to say no, which frankly is a bit upsetting. Not for the money, though that would indeed be quite nice, but because without exception they've all sounded like people I would enjoy having around, and because I just have a whole big feeling that Grillou is now ripe for people to be here. It's the first time I've felt that as an actuality rather than as a potential, which means I think that something has shifted on an energy level (look away now if you don't believe this stuff) and therefore that we're on course for all to be well.

La Fête du Tonnerre

Yesterday being the summer solstice (already! I'm sure the last one was only 4 months ago), it was also the occasion for La Fête de la Musique - a much anticipated event in this household as it marks the first opportunity of summer to get out there and dance till late.

The previous two days had been hot and cloudless. Tuesday dawned still hot, though much more humid and slightly hazy: by noon some ominous looking clouds were appearing from the west. Metéo France, on the ball as always, hurriedly changed its forecast to 'risk of storms'. At 2pm the thunder started. For the next 4 hours, it rumbled and groaned and banged in almost continuously and in spectacular fashion, but without a drop of rain.

At 6pm we came in to shower and change and by 6.30 were ready to go. Just as I stepped outside, I was almost knocked off my feet by the loudest clap of thunder I've ever heard, and someone up there in the sky started emptying buckets of water (and I mean buckets. I've never seen anything like it). It was suddenly as dark as night - all the better to watch the now almost continuous lightning that streaked around in all directions. The rain suddenly turned to hailstones the size of large pebbles. It was awesome.

We ran around with buckets. The storm continued at the same level of intensity for a whole hour before the rain slowly eased off, although the thunder continued in an almost continual rhythm. Then: bugger it, we said, no self-respecting Ariégeois is going to let a bit of a storm get in the way of a good fête. So we got in the car and made our way to St Girons.

We were right. People were arriving in droves. And though the thunder and lightning continued unceasingly, a hint of blue appeared in the sky. Unsurprisingly, what laughingly calls itself the timetable (if you live, or have ever travelled in France, you'll understand exactly what I mean by that ...) had been thrown into disarray, which was A Good Thing as it meant we could still catch the early gig by five young jazz musicians from Marciac, who'd decamped from their open stage to a smaller space under the arches outside the church while volunteers baled out the stage and tried to salvage the sound system ...

We wandered around sampling the usual mélange of thunder, rock, Cajun, punk, flamenco, chanson, blues, classical, Occitan, reggae and all the rest and were just about to sit down with a glass of something, some street food and some salsa when once again the heavens opened. All around us people grabbed their food and drinks and looked for shelter, of which there was nowhere near enough for the two or three thousand revellers. Most, like us, just put up their umbrellas, shrugged, and got on with it. I felt sorry for those eating 'properly' on the terraces of the various restaurants as tout d'un coup their plates were awash with water.

And still it thundered. And still the lightning tore and danced around the sky, often in several directions at once.

A few bands, those playing on open stages, simply had to abandon; some found rudimentary shelter and played acoustically instead. The rest just carried on regardless. As did the rain. We joined the huge crowd gathered around the Guinguette Ludique to hear and dance to the Celtic band Finnan; they're a multicultural (Canadian, French, German and English) mix and always highly popular. And when you're wet, you can't get wetter, so what to do but ditch the umbrellas and dance madly in the rain ............


PS The thunder finally moved away just before 1 in the morning. It had continued for eleven hours ....

Payback time!

Serves me right for gloating about spring-like weather. This morning it was so cold that the water in my wet tile cutter froze right up. As I was using it. Hmm.

There was a compensation though: drinking coffee in the sun at lunchtime, we watched a flock of a dozen or so Common Crossbills perched on the roof of the porcherie, just five metres or so away from where we were sitting. They stayed for quite some time, chattering and singing and flying up to the nearest fir tree and back. Common they may be called, but it was a first for me. Lovely.

Rakes and pains

For the last five days now we've had amazing weather - clear, cloudless blue skies and genuinely warm, spring-like air. At lunchtimes our thermometer has looked like this:

Pretty good for January, huh? Reminds me why we came to live here and not one of the many places I've fallen in love with over the years that are farther north .....

For the first couple of days I huffed and puffed around inside, carrying on doing things that were on the jobs list like finishing the staircase, plastering a wall and cutting the tiles for the bathroom floor, while gazing longingly at the bright yellow thing in the sky outside. By Sunday morning I could take it no more. Reluctantly I decided that Leaving The Premises was, given the length of the jobs list, just a step too far, but a couple of days working in the garden ... well, it's still work (and therefore okay), no? So on went the shorts (yes, really) and wellies, and we set to on the mammoth task of clearing up the garden ready for spring. Here, that means first and foremost raking leaves: living in the middle of several hectares of woodland is a wonderful thing, but trees have leaves, and leaves fall off. Most of them head Grillou-wards, or at least that's what it feels like, and every year we fill seven or eight huge leaf containers that we've made from chicken wire and hidden in strategic places in the woods (where else?).

Although I wouldn't swap it for anything, there are times (usually when I'm mowing ...) when I wish we had a nice, flat grassy garden instead of half a hectare of of rocky nooks and crannies on various degrees of slope, but a day of raking and barrowing and green has reappeared: always a wonderful moment. Next, we started pruning and shaping hundreds of shrubs, and beginning the task of clearing rocks and head-height brambles from the area around one of our ancient oak trees so that you can get near enough to hug it, and generally cleaning out some of winter's debris. Yesterday evening, the forecast end of the good weather, felt like the end of a holiday; I couldn't bear to come in and was still on the end of my rake, in bright moonlight, at 7.30.

At 8pm I realised that I was a bit stiff. By 9pm, I ached all over. By 10pm I could hardly move. It was great. Much of what I'm working on at the moment requires standing for long periods in one place, usually in a silly position, doing things that need anally perfect measurements, and my body had been crying out for some stretching and some physical effort. It got it.

This morning the sun came out again. But just to make you feel better if you're shivering in colder climes, winter is apparently returning on Thursday, with a 'high' of just 1 degree forecast for Friday ......

Through a glass, icily

A tale of two Grilloux ...

8.30am: a world white with hard frost: minus 6 degrees.

12.30pm: lunch on the terrace: 20 degrees in the sun. On the shady side of the house: still zero; central heating still on anti-frost setting.

A blackbird singing, in blissful defiance of the season.

On Sod and his law, and tomato gluts

Wouldn't you just know it? After yesterday's weather rant, today the sun shone in a cloudless sky, unpredicted by Metéo France. I, however, was indoors on glut management duties: Something Had To Be Done with the five kilos of tomatoes that had been sitting in their bowls looking accusing for several days. These are Agora tomatoes, from just two plants; I reckon we've eaten a good three kilos already, and there's still, assuming the blight doesn't get them, a good three kilos to ripen: that makes around 11 kilos of fruit from two 60 centime plantlets. Bargain. This is (and I'm frantically touching every wooden object I can find while crossing all my fingers and toes - not an elegant sight) the first year we've not had late blight; we've harvested well from our two cherry tomato plants too, though quite not so well, sadly, from the Cornue des Andes that were so productive last year.

And so I have quite literally been slaving over a hot stove. First I made a large batch of tomato sauce. Everyone has their own recipe for tomato sauce: this is mine.

Rich tomato sauce

3 kilos of ripe tomatoes, chopped
6 large onions, chopped
4 cloves of garlic
a rind of Parmesan (the hard bit that usually gets thrown away. Or in our case given to the dog)
a medium size tin of tomato purée
red wine
balsamic vinegar
one red chili pepper, deseeded and chopped finely
a handful of fresh herbs - I used rosemary, thyme, marjoram and basil, finely chopped or ripped

Fry the onions slowly in some olive oil, over a medium to low heat, until they're translucent (don't let them colour). When they're there, add the garlic and continue cooking for another 4 to 5 minutes. Add the tomatoes, and stir them around, then let them break down slightly in the warm oil. When they're starting to release their juices, stir in the tomato purée, a couple of tablespoons of balsamic vinegar, the chili pepper and the herbs; add the Parmesan rind, bring the pan to a fast simmer and then add a slug of red wine - half a good glass at least. Keep up the fast simmer for 30 seconds or so to 'cook' the wine, then turn the heat down so that the pan is simmering much more slowly.

And then wait. The sauce needs to reduce to about half its starting volume, by which time it will be thick and intensely flavoured: this can take up to three hours, or even more, depending on the tomatoes. Stir occasionally, and as the mixture gets thicker stir more often and keep a wary eye on it - it can catch, and there'll be tears and tantrums (or maybe that's just me. You're probably much more controlled).

When it's ready, season the sauce to your taste. Then you can do any number of things with it: it's obviously a great pasta sauce in its own right, and because it's thick and rich it makes a good sauce to use for pizza too, or just to serve with meat or fish, or to bake crêpes in. Or we'll often add things to it: black olives and capers and maybe a few anchovy fillets, or bacon, or chorizo, or more chili peppers, or ... If you're more refined than I am you can put the whole lot through a mouli (sieve) to make passata (or indeed you might have skinned the tomatoes first. I don't. Life's too short). Then eat/freeze/bottle/whatever.

While the sauce was reducing, I  made some chili-tomato jam, one of my all-time favourite relishes.

Tomato-chili jam

2 kilos of tomatoes, chopped
6 hot red chili peppers - I use Cayenne - deseeded and finely chopped
12 cloves of garlic, chopped
a large piece - 8 cm or so - of root ginger, peeled and finely chopped
1 kilo demarara sugar
250ml red wine vinegar
4 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

Blend (as in - in a blender or food processor ...) half the tomatoes with the chili, ginger and garlic and put the resulting purée into a large pan with the rest of the tomatoes and all the other ingredients. Bring to the boil, reduce to a simmer and cook until the mixture is reduced to half its volume - anything between an hour and three hours. Stir regularly, and as it gets more jam like, hover over it like a hawk. Burnt chili jam is not nice. And after a while check to see whether you've got the balance of sweet and sour to your liking - if not, adjust it as needed.

When you think it might be ready, spoon out a little onto a cold plate, as you would for a regular jam; you should be able to draw the tip of a knife through it without leaving a wet vinegar-y liquid behind. Then ladle into hot, sterilised jars. Great with - well, almost anything, really. Make more than you (think you) want, because trust me, it's addictive.

Glut management continues this week, in between staircase varnishing and balustrade painting (yuk), with figs and crab apples and quinces. That means - and who needs Metéo France? - that it will without a doubt be warm and sunny. You read it here first.

Comfort me with shopping

All good things must come to an end. (Or so I'm told. Personally I don't see why they should. Sounds a bit like a Puritan conspiracy to me. However.)

For a start, summer seems to have left us, suddenly and definitively. One day I'm outside wearing - well, not much, and sweltering; the next I'm reluctantly pulling on long sleeves. And today even I, the anti-clothes queen of Ariège, found myself putting on jeans - and, heaven forfend, a denim jacket - for the first time since the spring. I know of course that it's (probably) not all over bar the shouting - we can, and often do, get a wonderful Indian summer. And then there's l'été de la Saint Martin, around 11 November, which is often (more often than you might expect by chance ) an unusually mild and sunny period, after the first frosts but before the first snows - and almost exactly six months apart from the Saints de Glace. But all this aside, today I felt chilly, and I'm not good at that.

And then there's the diminishing of the light. Whereas just a couple of weeks ago we were happily eating outside at 9pm, now it's dark by 8.30, and by the time you've put all the outside lights and something warm on, to be honest the whole thing kind of loses the plot and so on the whole we've retreated indoors. I think we must be becoming French, or something. Mind you, to a sunlight freak like me there's something terribly depressing about the daily loss of daylight we have to endure for six months of the year, especially as it starts in June when summer hasn't even got going: the summer solstice may well be the beginning of summer, but it's also the beginning of the darkness. (Now the winter solstice ... that really is cause for celebration ....)

As if that weren't all enough, we're going through our own, slightly belated, rentrée: after our fantastic Ariège holiday week we're back at work with a vengeance ... and The Perfectionist is back for a final (well final-ish) fling. Much as I love my builder, however, I don't love the lime and plaster dust and mackerel tins that he has a habit of trawling along with him ... The good news though is that the new dining room is now lime plastered, has a door, and almost looks like a room and not the goat shed that it was (you do still have to leap a metre down to get to it as there are no steps yet, but I'm told that will change by  ... December. Sigh.); the good-and-bad news is that the next couple of weeks will see us borrowing some scaffolding from a friend and lime washing the entire room, the walls of which are - gulp - 5 metres high.

And so maybe all this goes some way towards explaining why a quick trip to Saint Girons market to buy broccoli plants this morning got waylaid into coffee with friends, and then into a bit of food shopping, and then into the buying of a half price barbecue, and then into a fully fledged shop-till-you-drop session for new clothes. Both of us have dropped two full sizes since we moved here and now that the trouser-wearing season has returned we've both tended to look, as my mother used to say, like sacks of potatoes, which is not good for the ego (and hoisting your Andy Pandy trousers up 127 times an hour gets pretty boring too). Although I'm not generally a fan of shopping, do you know what? It was fun. And two hours, five shops and several carrier bags later, we're fit to be seen in public again.

The most incongruous sound in the world?

Hello again, world. I'm back. Not that I've been anywhere, mind you. Couldn't, even if I'd wanted to. We've been tree'd in.

We woke on Tuesday morning to a grey, dank, wet, freezing cold day - thermal vest territory, and quite a contrast from the 26 degree plus temperatures of the previous week.

By ten o'clock the odd snowflake was making its appearance. By half past we were in a full blown blizzard.

By eleven o'clock our world was white, and the newly-in-leaf trees all around were creaking under the strain. By half past all we could hear was the sound of tree branches snapping under the weight of the wet, heavy snow and, every so often, the more ominous crash of a larger tree falling. At midday, we lost electricity. An hour later, our mobile phone signal went the same way.

A wellie-booted foray down the track to see what was going on was quickly aborted as branches and trees were falling like dominos, but not before it became patently obvious that we were going nowhere fast. The track was an impassable obstacle course. A thick, heavy oak branch balanced squatly on top of the main high tension electricity cable. Gulp. We retreated back to hot porridge and gave thanks to the goddess of gas hobs.

A while later a white figure appeared in the kitchen: our neighbour, bearing a hefty mechanical telephone and the news that her power cable had, under the weight of falling branches, been wrenched off the wall of her house, severed, and was now lying on the ground. She shook, slightly, and not from the cold. We plugged in the phone and found that, miraculously, we (unlike her) still had a faint connection. Like the rest of Ariège, we phoned ERDF, who are responsible for the electricity infrastructure, to be met with a recorded message telling us that over 25,000 households in the department were without power and Something Would Be Done About It, Sometime.

Two candlelit dinners and nights filled with fantasies of hot showers later, it was. Track cleared, electricity back on. Garden damage sadly noted: one lilac tree, one old plum, shrubs flattened, several ashes and a maple stripped, roses battered and ripped. Two hundred year oaks unscathed. And so, largely because I've become as superstitious as the French about planting before the Saints de Glace, was the potager.

Today, the air resounds with the noise of chainsaws. And the most incongruous sound in the world? The song of a nightingale, in the snow.

Normal life

So, over the last month or so we have - against all odds - managed to resume something of a (more) normal life. That doesn't mean we've stopped the réno and are now swanning round like retired gin-swilling colonels (heaven forfend ...) but it does mean that we've actually left the premises on more than one occasion: to go to the market, to drink une noisette on a café terrace, to see friends. Seeds have been sown, plantlets have been planted. Birds have been watched and listened to. Sun beds have been sat upon. A few days break for each of us on our own, plus a camping holiday together, have been planned. And I've taken up a completely unexpected, out-of-the-blue opportunity to do some work that I love, away from Grillou but only a few minutes up the road, over the next few months.

We've spent much of the time outside, clearing and cleaning and laying another stone terrace. Not a whole lot has progressed inside the house. But ... I'm beginning to hear the spaces between the words again, and to see Grillou as the house that we fell for over three years ago, not just as The Project. The weather has helped: it's been truly glorious and springlike for much of the time. The garden has suddenly come to life, full of blossom and tulips; the grass is growing, the first leaves are just beginning to unfurl and the roses are in bud. In many ways this is the most delightful time of year here - the birds are singing their socks off, snow still covers the peaks, the hillsides are white with the blossom of wild cherry and plum and vibrant green with new growth, purple orchids are everywhere, the markets are bursting with asparagus and strawberries. The sun is warm enough that you know you're in the south of France, but not so hot that you can't walk in it or work in it. Layers of clothes are shed, and legs see the light of day. Chilled rosé and ice cold beer take over from warming reds and hot chocolate.

Enough already of the walking commercial. But you might just want a tiny peep ....

Blossom on the cherry tree that we planted last year ...

... and quince blossom, amazingly delicate and almost exotic.

Looking towards L'Atelier d'Artiste ...

... and its dining terrace.

Oh, yes, the hairy thing in the last photo is Nouille, or Noodles, the latest addition to the Grillou clan. We adopted him from a family who found themselves having to return to the UK after living many years here; they, in turn, had adopted him when he appeared one day at their village bins, apparently abandoned. He's three years old, bilingual, and a Labrit (a type of Pyrénéen sheepdog); we think he's far too independent (aka stubborn) to have been the working dog that he was bred to be, which is probably why he was abandoned - one of the less endearing traits of some French farmers. He's also completely eccentric, besotted with people, has a real sense of humour and is wonderful company. Look away now if you're not a dog person, but if you are ...

I'd forgotten: you can never disappear up your own seriousness when there's a dog around.