Gurgle gurgle

French for mead is hydromel.   I have tried to make it before, but the homey I used was from a supermarket, and the result was not as I would like.   One of the things the locals do around here is keep bees, and so I got a decent lot of real honey from known, local sources.   Some special yeast and nutrient from a friend and it's bubbling away nicely.

Vide maison

There was a vide maison in the adjacent village last weekend, basically a car boot sale in a house.   In this case it was to empty an old shop that has been closed ever since we have been in France.   It was full of old electrics, machines and sundry items from a time when complicated things could be repaired by someone with creativity and a "can do" attitude.

I have never seen a carding comb before, and these machines look victorian in their "can do".   It was Aladdin's cave, and if you wanted old things for decorating a pub, it was a dream.

I bought a bunch of CDs and two Salmson pumps as spares for the gîte plumbing.

A big wheel

We went to spend a day at St Malo with my sister.   There's a big wheel in place at the moment, and we took a ride on it.  Great views over the city.

Brassicas: A Dead Loss

I decided to pay special attention to brassicas this year.   I laid aside a bed for them, manured it and made sure it was watered.   I didn't count on the black fly.

I got two fist-sized cabbages out of it and that's all from about 20 plants.   The rest were turned into crisps by a combination of blackfly and heat.   Even my Nasturiums were dessicated by blackfly.   I am consoled only by the fact that my neighbours have, like me, cofirmed a total write-off of cabbages, sprouts cauliflowers, etc.   And judging by these plants at the garden centre today, even the pros are having trouble.

I have recently planted a few seeds of Savoy cabbage in the hope that they will mature late in the year when the bugs have gone.

Power cuts

The electric power around here isn't all that reliable, with occasional outages, and many short drop-outs that are enough to get the UPSes to kick in and then shut off a few seconds later.  All of our most fragile electronic kit is protected with a UPS; we have three and they're not cheap.  So news of an improvement to the quality of our leccy supply is welcome.

We are warned of a scheduled power cut tomorrow, from 8h45 to 14h15, that they tell us is to improve the delivery of electricity.  Well, let's hope so.   This little lash-up is to keep the fridge-freezer running.  I have no idea how much power it takes, but I will find out tomorrow if 1.4kWh is enough to keep it going for five and a half hours.

Update:  The power cut has come and gone, timed to the advertised minute.  I took the advice from Microdave (see comments) and cooled the freezer down from its normal temperature of -18°C to -24°C and then set it back to -18°C when it was connected to the backup system.  When it is cooling, it consumes about 140 watts, so the batteries could keep it going for about a day if necessary. 

New buttons

I never regretted buying a flute that I thought was especially pretty.   A professional, hand-made flute, it had a solid silver body and the mechanism was in grey stainless steel.  I thought they went well together, and they made for a lighter flute.   It was a better instrument than I was a player, but I grew into it.

I have seen professionals on the TV playing an accordion exactly the same as mine, and I have been told that I should have no need ever to replace it.  But, being intended for pros, it doesn't have the special buttons with a roughened surface that identify the C and F keys (by feel, without having to look).  So I decided to fix this.

An outfit called "La Malle aux Accordeons" supplies buttons by mail order,  and you can get shiny gold-coloured ones that I decided would make my accordion look better.  So I bought some - 68 in all, including the 12 special ones, and fitted them.   The cat helped.

The second photo doesn't bring out the gold colour very well - the effect is better than it looks in the picture.

Neglected Leeks

I confess, I have neglected my leeks.   Last year, I carefully saved seeds from some select plants that I had allowed to flower, and this Springtime I scattered them on a square yard of soil, watered them and hoed them in.  I let Nature take its course, which is of course what it did, and soon my patch of leek seedlings was covered in weeds.

I managed to keep the weeds in check until a few weeks ago, but it was a losing battle, and the leeks became overshadowed by enormous unwanted plants.   The dry weather didn't help either, and the tips of the leek leaves were brown from drought.  Time to decide to act or just write it off and treat it as a dead loss.

I had to make space in the garden for them by digging up some of the potatoes.  It's a bit early for that, but the spuds are struggling in the heat and it's nigh on impossible to get water down to root level no matter how often I water them.  so I cleared a strip about a yard wide and 3 yards long.

All you can see of the leeks are the holes that they are hiding in, they are so small.   But I am hoping that, with the fertiliser I have put in the ground, and the water poured down the holes, they will recover.   There is another positive aspect to this approach - I uncovered some potatoes I had missed.

To the left are plastic cloches sheltering Amaryllis bulbs I have put out to benefit from the fertile soil and Summer sun.  To the right are the potatoes that I haven't dug up yet.