In the blink of an eye, (or so it seems), the letting season is nearly over. It has been a long hot summer and we have even found time to relax and enjoy a little bit of it. Sitting outside for our meal each evening and watching the sun setting has been fabulous. We even managed to get a few late night swims in.  This last few weeks, early morning the swallows have been gathering ready for their long trip south for the winter. It has been amazing to watch them all dipping in the pool for a drink on their way.

Over the summer we have been busy working inside trying to get a few things finished off.  We now have an office, I have a sewing room and we finished the upstairs bathroom just a couple of hours before our daughter & family arrived to test it.

All our guests have given us great reviews on HomeAway and everyone loved the villas with their private gardens and of course the pool area. The last guests are settled in for their holiday and we are back to building.

The job at the top of our 'Autumn List' is to get the outside of our house ready for when the facadiers arrive to do the rendering. They are booked for March, which seems ages away I know, but my list is a long one..... Poor Bryan !!!!   The day can't come too quickly when we won't have to look at the horrible red blocks. Yesterday we ordered 50 square meters of block paving for the path along the back of our house -which we hope to start to  lay early next week - weather permitting. At 30 degrees it is still too hot to work out in the sunshine, but it is good for an afternoon swim in the pool. My weather app says its going to be a little cooler towards the end of this week so hopefully we can do the preparation work then.

Bryan has had a few early morning jaunts on his moto with his new toy. He now has a drone.  The scenery around us is stunning and the vendanges (grape picking) is currently happening. The area is a fantastic place for walking and cycling. Watch this space for more of his photo's and video.

The windmill at Saint Chinian

Our plans for winter/spring are to finish the pool house and tile around the pool. Budget permitting there is going to be a small bar area and a pizza oven. There are also all the hedges to cut and the Olives to pick. I have plans for a rockery on the entrance drive but I'm not sure we will have time to do that this year. I also need to dig over the vegetable garden. The summer was too hot for the tomatoes and they had all been eaten or made into sauces by the end of July. The courgettes and peppers are still going strong and we have leeks & lettuce growing too.

This mornings pickings

We also have a UK and Australian trip to catch up with family to fit in and a holiday.  We missed our Ozzie trip last year due to my operation, (we did manage a short UK trip though), but all is booked for both this year and we can't wait.

Flaming June

The sun is shining, the pool is sparkling and summer lettings are in full swing.

                                                                               

Dave

                                                                                                                                                                  We have a new team member here at Les Oliviers - Dave - Our new pool robot.  What a difference he makes to my morning. Instead of having to spend an hour manually cleaning the pool we just pop him in and off he goes to work.  We should have bought him a lot sooner. No doubt Bryan will find me more things to do with my new found time !

Sunday was a day of rest, the first one for a long time when we didn't do any DiY. 

We went for a stroll around the market at St Chinian to pick up some lettuce plants for the garden and bumped into a friend who said we should go for a walk around his vineyard and help ourselves to the cherries from his tree there. So after lunch armed with ladders and a receptacle we went on a cherry picking session.  They always taste nicer when they are free.

The vegetable garden is all planted and we are already eating courgettes, lettuce and spring onions from it. The tomatoes are not ready yet, hopefully by next week they will be ripe. The strawberries were very tasty but they have all gone now.  Nothing beats going out into the garden to pick fresh fruit and vegetables that you have grown yourselves.  

The plan for the next few weeks is to have a working upstairs bathroom for when family arrive in August. We have a lot of landscaping to do in the garden but it is too hot to be working outside at the moment.  In between digging, weeding, building, gardening and all the other daily work Bryan has been busy creating a video for promoting Les Oliviers and I may be biased but I think he has done a magnificent job.

The 2019 Season is underway

Yesterday the first of this year's guests arrived for their holiday.
As usual we were still working on the final touches until 5 minutes before their arrival. Some things never change.

The pool area is as finished as it is going to be for this year. The roof was finished on Friday afternoon, and Saturday was the day for tidying up all the building rubbish. We need to finish the interior of the pool house but having run out of time we have decided to leave it until the autumn. The team arrived to render the pool house & pool walls on the first of March and we were not quite ready for them so the whole month of March was spent trying to keep one step ahead. It is now finished and we are really pleased with it,

We managed to finish the garden at the end of the pool area. It now just needs some sunshine for it to grow ( and covering with gravel, but after moving 10 tonnes of topsoil by hand we are waiting to recover before attacking this little job).

The weather in March was every bit as good as February but April has been cool and showery.  The vegetable garden has been dug over and lettuce and spring onions are growing away quite happily but we are waiting for the warmer weather, which has been promised for next week, before planting the tomatoes, courgettes and peppers. All the summer flowering seeds I sowed have been potted on and are ready to be planted out too.  The shrubs and trees have been full of blossom and the Wisteria around Villa Lucques has been stunning.


We now have electricity connected fully in our house as well as the solar panels. It's quite a novelty to have the kettle and the toaster on at the same time. The underfloor heating has also been connected and tested and all works well. Hopefully we won't need it until at least December.

I have been banned from making new lists until the end of the summer - we are supposed to be taking things a little easier over the summer months - I do have a mental list though and it's getting longer every day.

February 2019

The marathon 33 sessions of radiology was completed yesterday and now we can go back to normal life. I must say it felt strange not to have to get up at 6am to get ready for the taxi to take me to the clinic.


Over the last week or so we have been putting the roof on the pool house and by the end of this week it will be ready to tile.  The pool area walls are finished and ready for the render and hopefully this will be done when the team arrive in March.

The weather has been fabulous so I have also been busy in the gardens. Weeding, cutting back and replacing the plants we lost in the long, hot summer last year. Our tomato seeds have been planted but I haven't managed to sow the peppers, courgettes and spring onions yet, ( it's on my list). We still need to rotovate the vegetable garden and add more compost before we are ready for planting anything out.


Bookings are coming in for both Villas.  Villa Lucques is nearly full and there are just a few weeks left to fill for Villa Picholine. Because we are working outdoors all day nothing has happened in our house so on my list for March is - finish the electrics, finish plumbing in the underfloor heating (not that we need it at the moment) and if there is any time left, finish the office on the mezzanine.  There are a few other things on my list also but I won't push my luck by mentioning them at this moment.

The Almond Blossom has been stunning this year. Bryan managed to sneak out on his bike last week with his trusty camera to capture it.  Spring is just around the corner now and the days are lengthening. We have even been able to eat lunch outdoors a few times which is a lovely bonus at this time of year.

Welcome 2019

Villa Lucques

I'm not quite sure where to start on this blog.....

2018 was quite a difficult year for us.  Early in the year Bryan was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. I suppose we should have foreseen that this may happen - His father and Uncle both had it so the law of averages deems that it would crop up somewhere in his family of brothers and sisters. With his nickname of Unlucky Alf he turned out to be the one. Then just when we were getting back on track life took on another twist when I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Thankfully due to the fantastic health care system we have here in France it was diagnosed very early and the prognosis is good.  I had an operation at the end of October to remove the tumour and surrounding tissue and am now undergoing quite a few courses of radiology. This involves a 2 hour round trip daily to the radiology unit. Obviously all the hospital appointments etc takes up a lot of time and so we are now - yet again- trying to play catch up with the building project. 

A lovely shady spot

We are desperately trying to finish the pool house and the team have been booked, for March, to render the facade and the pool area walls. So time is something we don't have a lot of.   In between building we have the poolside garden, the fountain into the pool to finish and a large rockery border to do also.  Fingers crossed for good weather. 

The Terrace

As you can see photo's were taken of Villa Lucques and rentals began in June 2018. Etoiles de France came out earlier in the year and gave us a 4 star rating which made all the hard work worth it. It was fully booked for the summer and bookings for summer 2019 are looking very good too. 

Work in our house is still ongoing and we have a working kitchen and bathroom. It feels more like home every time we complete a job on my list.  We still haven't connected the underfloor heating. It's a good job we have a lovely wood burning stove to keep us warm and cosy. 

I haven't been out in the vegetable garden much lately- I have been forbidden to dig it over - I hope Bryan will find a little bit of time to turn it over for me when I have taken out the last of the leeks, celery and cabbage.  I need to have a mammoth soup making session.  I have planted my broad beans in pots ready to go out when the digging is finished and all the tomato, green beans, courgette, carrot and lettuce seeds are on order for the end of next month.

We did manage a short vacance to Southern Spain in the camping car in between my operation and start of radiology and a BBQ was had on the beach for our Christmas lunch which reminded us of our time in Australia this time last year. So the year ended on a positive note.  Heres to a happy, healthy 2019