...and from the other side of the wall it looks like this. The new gates are still in the garage waiting to be hung. 

...trouble is, we have run out of flint for edging the beds. But once the box gets going, we won't need it anyway. 

We've been leaving the front garden fallow for the last 18 months to try and get rid of our bindweed problem. Now at last we are creating the anglo/french/scottish parterre of our dreams. 

Frogspawn v terrapins

We will probably never have terrapins in our pond. But thanks to John and Linda we should have frogs this year. After lunch at J & L’s today, John manfully waded into their pond to help us populate ours.

We brought back a great big dollop of frogspawn, together with a bucket full of oxygenating weed. Logan was pretty good at catching weed on the fly from scoop to bucket, but there’s enough left to get our pond going with Elodia. And when Gwen brings the waterlily she’s promised, we will solemnly launch the canoe and plant it in the centre.

Life may not be perfect, and probably is not perfectable. But ponds do help to create the conditions for utopia.

North end of Notre Dame at Poitiers. The church gives name to market ( les halles - pronounced without liason ie - ley al) which spills out into the adjacent 'place'. There's actually a 'bio' veg stall selling organic produce. The rest of the church suffers from poor renovation work, but this façade is gloriously intact. 

The beach at IL d'Oleron last weekend, with the upright wooden poles which run the length of the beach, and no I didn't have bad b.o. that day! 

A rather good picture of the striped neck terrapin which apparently is a native of the Iberian peninsula and southern Europe, he/she is fully grown and appears to be thriving, albeit lonely! 

A pond skater and two water beetles

I know its not much, but it's the first sign of fauna in our pond. Thrilling or what!

At last, progress with our barn

Ian came round this morning to talk us through the pricing of all the various parts of the job of building the barn on the site of the garage. It was make-or-break time, since the cost of building materials, labour and tax have all gone up wildly since we first had the idea a year and more ago.

If we are prepared to build a three bay structure, however, rather than four bays (i.e. do without one stable-sized space) we can still afford to go ahead. And so that's what we'll plan to do. I can't describe what a relief it is to have got to the point of actually commissioning the building. Martin the architect will now redraw the barn we have agreed with Ian, will sort out planning permission and so on. This should take about eight weeks, so building should be able to start in early summer, with a twelve week build schedule.

The last detail we asked Ian to put on the drawing was the hay loft door, wide enough to allow access for canoe storage. When we get the plans, I'll scan them in to give a better idea of what we're building.

A short digression into SPAM names

I‘ve been getting an awful lot of spam just lately. At first I just ignored it, thinking that our various protective devices would slow it down. But then I started noticing the names of the supposed senders of the messages, and was gradually drawn in to the strange world of spam naming conventions. In no particular order below is a list of my favourite spam senders, from whom I have received unsolicited mail in the last few weeks:

Joan R Wirehat
Edgar Llybthlao
Edith Andsak
Dolores Tphr
Madeleine Ygebt
Neddie Yipobi
Lawrence Obbydah
Nancy Efe
Ifor Alvarado
Hannibal Hampton
Natalka Wareham
Raisel Durfey
Cravin A. Tutu
Bessy Wack
Gladys Doupa

And now, I can imagine all these people - their lives, hopes, aspirations. Who would not want to buy fake viagra from them?

A good morning's shopping

To PLG Farm Supplies this morning in bright sunshine. Our shopping list includes:
- a sack of grass seed, pasture reclamation mix, enough for half an acre;
- 2.5Kg of collared (springhead) nails;
- one pair of rigger boots, size seven.

We really only need enough grass seed to re-sow the low point at the bottom of the field where the spoil from the pond excavation was spread, about an eighth of an acre at most. But half-acre sacks are the smallest they do.

Earlier we had been to the nursery near Aylsham and bought 140 Box plants to edge the parterre beds in Naomi’s redesigned front garden. Later I test drive an ancient Landover Discovery. Well, not ancient perhaps: getting on for ten years old with 145,000 miles on the clock, but in very good fettle. This is to be a replacement for Naomi’s Ford, in a roundabout way. She’ll take over the Kangoo, which really came into its own this winter.

Altogether a good morning’s shopping. In the afternoon we carry on reconstructing the front garden. We are putting back the two front gates as they would have been when these were two cottages. The gate posts are in place, and the oak gates are in the garage, waiting to be hung next week. Box planting tomorrow, I should think.

Betelgeux

It’s a beautiful, mild, starry night. A bright moon in the west-south-west is not obscuring the stars of the southern sky. The great triangle formed by Betelgeux, Procyon and Sirius is the most distinctive feature in the sky, as clear as I’ve ever seen it. Rigel is very bright too.

Naomi and I stand in the field looking for shooting stars, wondering why the farm at Wood Dalling seems so much better lit than it used to. In fact the general level of background light seems higher than when we first moved here, although there has been no significant development. I hope it’s just the brightness of the moon reflecting off encroaching cloud cover.

As we go inside, I recall reading that Betelgeux is 25 million times bigger than the sun.

Interior 

Church of Our Most Holy Redeeemer, Exmouth Market 

Clerkenwell

I was in London today at City University. In Northampton Square the almonds and the plum trees were approaching perfection.

I had time to walk the surrounding streets. This part of Clerkenwell has some of the best 19th and 20th century social housing in Islington and some unspoilt (or beautifully restored) Arts and Crafts pubs and cafes.

One of my favourite places is Exmouth Market, one of the most perfect streets in North London. It has an unpretentious version of everything civilised life could require. You can eat Turkish, Greek, Thai, bistro or Italian café and buy a selection of items to suit any possible mood (one of Steinbeck’s proofs of civilisation).

I hadn’t been in the music shop for a year, but the guy who runs it was still as helpful as ever, and will happily post me a copy of Electric Gypsyland if I can’t find it anywhere else. You get the sense that the people who live and work here care a lot about what they do.

Maybe nowhere more so than in one of my favourite churches, the parish church of Our Most Holy Redeemer. Apart from a fabulous name, it’s a lovely building, completed in 1888, and it feels like a genuine community space which happens to be a mystical and artistic sanctuary.

I discovered today that the church has close links with the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, only 20 miles from where we live, and I was strangely and rather surprisingly content in the knowledge.

Coypu 

Female Blackcap  

Redwing at Roy and Michelle's 

A pond-related note from Roy

In e-conversation with Roy and Michelle about our developing pond-comparison story, Roy writes:

"I sit and work by some portes-fenetres and spend quite some time each day looking out the window which gives out to a pond (une mare - about 10 meters away)......The pond is a 'fire' pond. These are situated close to rural/remote houses as a water source in case of fire. But a pond by any other name....it's made us determined to prioritise a similar feature in our new 'garden'. We're keen to hear your 'pond' stories as it develops... Watch this/that space.Right I'm getting kicked off the computer, so that's me done for now."

Roy also sent some lovely photos of wildilfe in their current French garden. I'll post a sample on the site later today.

View south, with mud. 

Pond looking NW 

Pond looking NE 

Wildlife pond

We're in the process of making a wildlife pond in our field. It's surrounded by a sea of mud at present, and has no plants at all yet. It is fed by a new set of land drains that collect all the rainwater off the roof of the house (and later will collect the rain off the new barn too). Early days, I know, but it looks like this now.

La Vie en Rose

Our friends Michelle and Roy sold their house in Norfolk and moved to France at the end of last year. I'm thinking of setting up a blog so that all their UK friends can easily keep in touch. Here is the email I sent as an experiment, simultaneously posting on my blogsite and sending as conventional email, to see whether the idea can be workable, what it looks like, feels like etc..

" Hi Michelle and Roy
Nice to hear from you, and really good news that we'll soon see you again next door! I know you sent this a few days ago, but Naomi doesn't always forward your mails to my email address. Maybe you could include my own email address (this one) in your email circulation list for messages from France!

I guess you know that we'll be around that weekend and so can fit in with you and your plans.

We're off to the Theatre Royal tonight - our annual pilgrimage to see the Richard Alston dance company. Not sure exactly who's going as Chris has organised the booking this time.

By the way did, you enquire of me about the identity of a bird in an earlier email? I didn't see that one yet either although N did mention it. I'll try to remember to ask her to find it for me so I can respond.

Looking back through some of your earlier emails, they tell a wonderful story. I wonder if you've considered setting up a weblog to record the progress of your French life. That way, you could post your blog to everyone, include pictures and other images and have another creative (and free) way to communicate with us all.

I'm an enthusiast as my blogsite is two days old (you can view it at this link below):

http://pauljosephandrew.blogspot.com/

I found it fairly easy to set up (and I don't regard myself as very web-literate), and I'm enjoying playing around with it. Alternatively, if you didn't want to set up your own blog, I'd could start a theme in my blog for communcating with you.

I'll add a bit to my blog to see what it might look like. I can always take it down again if it seems too naff!

Much love

Paul

Our garden last week 

Typical morning

A fairly typical morning for this time of year. Get up at six, feed cat, put kettle on, empty dishwasher, set table for breakfast. Take Naomi first cup of tea. It takes until 7.00 for us to drink two cups of tea each and gradually get ready to begin the day. By this time it’s fully light.

Naomi is off to Newmarket this morning (as on many previous mornings) to run a training session for mentors of trainee teachers. I’m going to the university where I’m set to be on an interview panel for a new job we’ve created to share with the careers service.

It’s a mild spring-like morning, and there are a thousand garden-related jobs to do, but they’ll all have to wait. Now if I could just persuade both of us to work less...!

Wildlife gardening

One of the things this blog is about is my determination to work with Naomi, my much-cherished wife, in geting our work-life balance right. Both of us would love to spend more time working on our 1 acre garden, most of which is devoted to habitat creation for birds, animals, insects, wild flowers in our part of Norfolk, East Anglia. So this first ramble is to get my mental ball rolling on strategies for doing this, starting now!