The tooth fairy

And would you believe it? The tooth fairy’s prayers have been answered. I stomped into the house to replenish the logs in the fire; the phone rang, and it was Nicolas asking for work. He may have a busted knee, but with a bionic looking brace and a need to feed himself and his family after a month of medical bills, he was coming round with the chain saw to help.

And the afternoon just flew by: suddenly with two attacking the pile and the larger logs and branches being tidied away, I almost feel as though I have done the lot.  

There is a day’s worth of chipping still to do; and I will have to rake the little sticks left behind. But not long now, and I will be able to show a rather fetching photograph of a new area of garden.

And the cheeky thing is it’s not even our garden. It is a forty foot by hundred foot patch of land between our two properties: owned by an absent Palix family member who never tends to it, and who will never sell.   The walls are beautifully constructed, and the soil is rich.   It was paradise for the ducks that our previous owner used to house there.   A small spring of running water held mostly in check by a rock pool and plenty of young bramble shoots to attack. Oh yes, the brambles. But now that I can get in there (well, next week when it’s finished) it will be easier to manage.

I was speaking to Jean Daniel about it last night (music concert in St Etienne de Serre) and he said that when they moved in thirty years ago it was just a jungle of brambles and weeds. And it was only after they had cleared and slashed and burned did they find a beautiful stone footpath between stone walls leading down to the road.

My contribution was to find a lovely clump of violets peeping out from under the willow tree beside the duck pond. I’ve never seen those before.