I haven’t had much time for writing recently, because it is our busiest two weeks of the year. As you can guess, living in the south of France and running a couple of gites (holiday rental properties) is not always the hardest job in the world.
It is harder than you think – it must be, [...]

In the garden we have several fig trees. These are reasonably attractive, and one of them provides a good amount of shelter for the seating area of one of the holiday gites we have here. We also have an ancient orchard – peaches mainly, and a few apples, pears and nectarines. Doesn’t that sound nice? [...]

This year I have taken over reponsibility for our self-sufficiency. Doesn’t that sound impressive. What it means is, Mrs B has told me I have to pull my weight in the garden, and she has enough to do maintaining the acres of ‘real’ garden around here without having time to plant vegetables as well. So [...]