A Quick Link

I found this great idea, thought, photo linked in a great blog Bluebirdbaby that I read regularly.

Availles Limouzine

Pepiniere d'Availles

On the first day of our holidays my parents took us to see some friends of theirs who have started up a nursery. The Pepiniere d’Availles is an ecologically sound nursery offering a wide range of honeysuckles, magnolias, and many other plants, shrubs and trees that I couldn’t identify. One of them even had flowers that smelt like toffee! I lusted after a honeysuckle but at that point our car boot lid still didn’t open and so we weren’t sure we’d be able to get one home in one piece. I wished we’d have risked it.

Not only do Barbara and Romain run their nursery on ecologically sound principles, they also have renovated their traditional Charentais/Limouzine (I admit to not knowing which) house using low impact and highly effective materials. The inside has a huge fireplace/stove/wood burning hearth which like the rest of the place is insulated with a hemp compound. Normally those places are really quite cold. I would have loved to take pictures as the place inside looks so different from the outside. It looked like it had come out of an interior design magazine and at the same time felt warm and welcoming. They also have animals (carthorses, goats, ducks, hens etc..) which they both work and which also produce food. A really sound enterprise and such friendly people too. So all you people out there round about and nearby, go buy your plants at Pépiniére d’Availles.

Our Temporary Resident

 

We woke up one morning about five weeks ago to find a duck in our back yard. She had already thrown out lots of my precious anemone (that forgot to flower last year) and had laid four eggs in the pot. After deciding not to eat them (and yes there were suggestions. Duck eggs make wonderful sponge cake), we wondered what to do and decided just to watch her hatch them

By now there are 15 eggs in there and she has been sitting on them for over two weeks. A lady from the city will come and move her and her chicks to the lake in the park when they are hatched. There is no way she'd get the over three walls, down into a courtyard, across the road and the park safely. We are enjoying her company.

Spring

Spring! If you ignore the hail, sleet and below zero nighttime temperatures.

April already

It's April already! What is happening to this year? I have lots of photos and stories to share from our trip to France. Eggs, diggers, new houses, spring moments...

Just got to find the cable for my camera......

Taking it slow and thinking

Taking it slow was the order of the last week. A cup of coffee, a double chocolate muffin and a whole day of sunshine. They added up to a beautiful, slow and deeply refreshing day. It would have been better if I'd have had my coffee shop friend (not in the Dutch manner!) there with me, but she chose to move away, so I had to enjoy it by myself. Which I did.

I read this today:

"The Hebrew Talmud says: 'Be very careful if you make a woman cry, because God counts her tears. The woman came out of a man's rib. Not from his feet to be walked on. Not from his head to be superior. But from the side to be equal. Under the arm to be protected, and next to the heart to be loved.' "

I love it. I feel like shouting it at all those blokes who say things like "what do you expect for a rib?" Only it is too long to quip back and why gratify them with the idea that I might entertain the thought of them being equal to me? But then I suppose they are, we are equal, just not the same. That is good too.