We had a fab time catching up with family over Christmas and arrived back here a week late, at the end of January, (I'll save that story for later).  We had 7 weeks to prepare for the facadiers - a bit of a tight schedule but we were ready for a challenge.  Mid march arrived in a flash. Then Covid- 19 struck !

France was put on lockdown on the Tuesday at noon and everything ground very quickly to a halt. The facadiers rang on Wednesday evening to say they were ready to come the next day but couldn't get any product for the walls. We had worked so hard to be ready for them - it was so disheartening.

After a day of mooching about miserably we gave ourselves a good talking to, picked ourselves up and carried on with the work we did have products for.  Bryan has finished the portico above the swimming pool gate and he is now building our Bbq & pizza oven round the rear of our house.  The block paving has been laid around the back of the house and the gardens in the villas are looking very colourful and spring like.

Villa Picholine Terrace

The vegetable garden has been rotovated and we have sown beans, carrots, courgettes, spring onions, radish and lettuce. The tomatoes are potted up and waiting for the soil to warm up a little more before being planted out and I am waging a daily war with the vast amount of weeds that pop up and unfortunately for me the weeds are winning at the moment.

Les Oliviers Pool Area

The pool when we came back was a lovely shade of green and it has taken me weeks to get it back to a beautiful blue colour. It now looks so inviting and is warming up with all the sunshine we have had this last couple of weeks. I will be checking the temperature daily - I can't wait for our first swim of the year

Fast forward a couple of weeks and the facadiers rang to say the local builders merchants were opening to professionals and he had managed to find some base coat for the walls and that the next week he could get the top coat.  Things were looking up - finally after starting this project 10 years ago - we were going to see the outside finished.  We can't wait.  Inside is going to take a little longer - the stone merchants is closed so the travertine for our staircase could be a long time in the making.

Spring Vines

We are still on lockdown, but that doesn't change our days here at Les Oliviers. We are mostly self contained. I just venture out once a week for groceries as normal. Espace Vin in St Chinian is doing free deliveries and we can go out for our daily walk as long as we don't venture further than 1 km and have our authorisation paper with us. The fine, if not, is 130 euros each .





There is lots to keep us occupied in the garden and preparing the villas for this years guests.  Hopefully things will improve as the weeks go by and things will return to something more like normal.