Mucking about in France

On the day we arrived at the gite, Deb took us up behind the building to her vegetable garden plot and asked us to weed it out. At the time, it was a few small squares of turned-over and de-rocked soil bounded by a nice little slate border. Only one section still had growing vegetables -- cabbage and broccoli -- the other two, about the same size, were weed-covered and had a few last dried-out stalks of plants.

"Any rocks you find," said Deb, "just toss onto the wall. If you get a chance, you can pile the dead leaves from that big pile there onto the beds and cover the leaves with soil so they'll be ready for spring."

And so began an odyssey in soil.

Once the garden was weeded out, the soil turned, the leaves and soil piled back on, we realized that we could keep going. Beyond the prepped beds was at least three or four times as much ready space for a really big garden -- the soil just needed to be dug up and turned.

"Just."

Here is a photo of David turning the soil in the existing bed on, I think, the second day. You can see the massive pile of leaves on the right-hand side of the photo. The soil under it all the way back to the far corner was mostly unturned -- Deb had turned the very corner part earlier this year, but it had gone unused and in this photo is still covered in weeds.



We had gotten good and underway when we were hit with two or three days of more or less constant rain. Although there were a couple of breaks in the weather where we could work outside, we didn't make much headway until the weather turned fine again. In the meantime, we did indoor stuff like helping around the house, looking after the kids, and cooking (OK, mostly it was David doing the cooking). I even went to a yoga class with Deb one evening!

Then a few days ago we were finally able to get back to work. This photo is pretty deceptive -- it looks like a lovely garden plot. The pile of leaves is mostly gone, there appears to be a nice soil surface.


Ah... what lies beneath...

Rocks.

Lots and lots of rocks. Big rocks.

At one point, a tine snapped off the garden fork. At that point, David turned to the pickaxe to manhandle the rocks out of the soil.


This worked much better, and he was able to open up trenches that really seemed more rock than soil.


He really had to get in there.


It made a mess of his jeans.


Most of the rocks were about fist-sized, ranging up to about football-sized. A good number were watermelon-sized. But every little while, David, with much cursing and muttering, would haul a real doozie out -- there were seven or eight rocks each the size of one of those old computer monitors that were such a pain to have to move every time you wanted to untangle the cords behind them -- but much heavier and correspondingly awkward to move (we mainly just rolled them with much heaving).

Here's a photo of one of the "watermelons":


Mixed in with the soil and rocks was all kinds of detritus left by the previous owner(s): mostly broken terracotta roof tile and concrete chunks, probably dumped there when one of the buildings had been renovated; but also just plain junk like plastic bottles, bits of metal, old building material packaging; and enough roots that the handsaw came in handy on a couple of occasions. Deb and David agreed there was an element of archeology to it -- we even found an old shell casing!

Finally, yesterday afternoon, the whole plot had been dug up. Our co-HelpXer, Joey, had raked more leaves that had been added to the soil. At this point, David looked (deservedly) pleased with himself.


But we were left with a huge pile of all those rocks! So our last task today was to heave them over the wall and add them to the side facing the footpath that passes by the garden. Let me tell you, I have a newfound admiration for people who construct dry-stone walls (we saw a lot of those in Ireland) and even more so for various pioneering people who ploughed entire crop fields out of stony ground. I suppose we should have realized how much stone might be lying under the surface of a plot of land lying directly under a mountain, but it all looked so innocent when we started out!

So, now... go back to that second photo in this post. Now imagine that all the rocks that lie beneath the surface are part of a newly-enhanced wall. The largest ones hem in the cabbage-patch in a small feat of decorative landscaping.

Now imagine that that entire plot of land is filled with every manner of gorgeous vegetables. That's the image we've had in our heads, thanks to what we've (half-)jokingly called "The Vision" that David started out with whem all we were doing was weeding.

We hope Jon and Deb send us photos!

There's cold in them there hills!

So, having left the big cities of Lyon and Paris behind us, we're still alive, and have arrived at a "gite" (guesthouse) David found through a new website, Helpx (as opposed to WWOOF, with which we were having zero luck). It's in a small village called Bédeilhac, outside the main town of Foix in the Ariège department, which is in the Pyrenees, very close to the Spanish border. It's most known for Neolithic caves, Cathar strongholds, and being on the Pyrenees leg of the Tour de France route.

Our hosts are a young (early 30ish) British couple, Jon and Deb, who met while working at a ski resort and decided to start a climber's gite here. They've been here for just over a year, and have just opened the gite for business, although it still needs renovation work (which is something we expect to be working on -- painting, plastering, etc.). They also have two little boys of 2 and 3, and there is another "Helpx helper", Joey, from the Boston area, who has been here almost a month. We are staying in the gite in a very cosy room -- DEFINITELY an improvement on the caravan we stayed in in Ireland! There is a nice common room with a wood-burning stove and a kitchenette upstairs, and Deb has already given David the go-ahead to make use of anything he finds in the main house, including the kitchen, so you know there will be plenty of kitchen activity in the days to come!

Just outside the gite and the main house/cottage where Jon and Deb themselves live is a huge precipice, going almost straight up. Apparently this is a prime location for rock-climbing, and it's easy to see why. There should also be some good leisure activities for those of us who don't scale sheer cliffs, like walking and biking, provided the weather lets up (it's been rainy for the past little bit, but apparently was glorious over the weekend, so fingers crossed). Beyond that, there is a small garden, some chickens and pigs, probably hanging out with the kiddies, and, as I mentioned, the renovation work. You can see the photos of the place and the area on the website, but I'm sure we'll have plenty of our own in no time!

I seem to have gotten over the homesickness and upset stomach that plagued me toward the end of our stay in Paris and arriving in Lyon. Corinne (my mother's cousin's sister-in-law, who lives in Lyon) took us out for a lovely dinner on last night in Lyon at one of her favourite restaurants, Olivier's, and we had a great time. It would have been a shame to miss out on Lyon gastronomie, one of it's main claims to fame, so I'm glad I had recovered in time to have a delicious fish dish. She also took some time to show us around the city a bit when we first arrived.

We are quite encouraged by the Helpx site, where people seem a bit more welcoming and flexible than those we encountered through the WWOOF website. Even better, membership at the site includes several countries/areas, as opposed to WWOOF, where each site and its membership was discrete. We are going to start looking for places in Italy ASAP, and ideally will have the remainder of our travels/timeline sketched out by the time we leave here.

In the meantime, my parents have started planning their own trip to Spain in a few weeks, and we will meet up with them to spend some time exploring the area around Malaga.

OK, I've been a bad girl, lounging in bed while David helps Deb take the older boy to daycare and go food shopping, and I should get myself some breakfast and get ready to earn my keep!

Impressionists and impressions

I know that many of you are just gutted that you cannot be here with us in Paris as we wander through the endless museums on offer.

So, always mindful of my audience, I thought I would take this opportunity to give you a vicarious taste of today's visits to the Orangerie and Musee d'Orsay. As you know, these museums are where some of the best Impressionist works can be found.

The Orangerie mainly exists to house the massive Water Lilies paintings by Monet. In two oval rooms, you are surrounded first by water lilies in the morning, then water lilies in the evening, enhanced by daylight from skylights far overhead, filtered through vellum canopies. I don't remember whether this setup existed when I was there last; certainly I don't remember the music that they pipe in to accompany your viewing experience:


Because we were there so early, there were hardly any people. When I was there last, there were so many people crowding the rooms that I could hardly see -- let alone appreciate -- the paintings.

(Note: there doesn't seem to be any "off-season" for tourists in Paris. No matter where we go, there are tourists jamming everything -- especially at the Louvre, Notre Dame, and, no surprise, the Eiffel Tower. This is exacerbated by the fact that it appears to be mid-term break in many schools, and Paris seems to be the place to drag the kiddies if you're a European parent.)

We spent a good long time in the Musee d'Orsay, but we haven't downloaded the photos from the good camera yet, and besides, you've probably seen most of the notable works that are there if you've taken any kind of art history classes in school. What you probably haven't seen are these shadow-puppets from the "Black Cat Cabaret" that was started at the turn of the century by a group of artists and writers who liked to create improv puppet-shows with topical subject matter -- kind of the SNL of their time, I guess.



We headed home relatively early (last night we stayed out late because the Louvre was open until 10) to buy some groceries and cook dinner (to be fair, David did the cooking) in the little apartment we're renting for the week in Montmartre. While dinner was in an in-between stage, David decided he wanted to be interviewed about his impressions of Paris:



He may come off as jaded, but he still conceded to a romantic moment under the Eiffel Tower the other night -- and I even had a cold!