Riding Lessons In France

One of the opportunities that we have taken advantage of over the past year is for Joshua to have Riding Lessons during our visits to France. We were lucky in meeting Lisa of Mazeirat Equestrian Centre, who with her partner Graeme have built a menage in a wonderful setting not far from La Souteraine, complete with the ability to go Horse Treking in their own forest woodland.

Joshua has been fortuntate to have had around 10 'one to one' lessons with Lisa and mainly on his favorite horse Viking, one of 12 horses and ponies that Lisa has available. This has resulted in his growing confidence 'on top' and as the video below will show, Joshua has now progressed to starting to canter with Viking, as well as succeeding to go over a 0.7 meter jump.

We strongly recommend anyone to visit Lisa and her facility and take advantage of the wondeful horses, and friendly, professional service.

Springtime in France

Easter 2009 arrives and our visit finds the garden in bloom, the daffodils bursting and the grass just stating to grow fast. Our planning and work over the preceeding few years is starting to produce the results we hoped .

We decided to plant slow growing, small and dwarf daffodils in the hope that they would not flower until mid to later April each year and they woudl not droop; it seems to have worked. Mind you, it does not look like there are 500 bulbs planted!

The mulched grass cuttings appear to help keep the weeds to a miminum and hopefully continued application will help improve water retention over the coming months and years. We have also used wood bark in the borders and particulary the Herb beds, which is working.

We were given a selection of Willow that has been planted in the trellis I built and these will hopefully provide a screen and work with the Clematis and Wisteria we planted.

Joshua has created a video show of the garden and we have included some views here, so please take a look .

Life continues to get better - February 2009

Well, it has now been more than 2 years since our dream came true and the French Adventure continues.

We have had a busy 2 years or so and nearly all of our time during each visit has been dedicated to the garden, or as I keep saying 'the taming of the field'. It really is not possible to have a garden like we do in England out here in this area of France, if you rely of holiday breaks to attend to things.

Every shurb we have planted has grown without any problems, as a result of the mixture of the rain and sunshire here in the Creuse, but that also means the weeds and grass grow quickly as well. We have only succeeded by finding a reliable local to regularly give the grass a cut and it is essential this is done every 2 weeks in the height of the season, otherwise the field take overs!

We have put lots of effort every visit into weeding in the shurb borders and it appears that our hard work is starting to bring success. Weeding is getting less, as the shrubs grow stronger and compete for the space and light.

Around the perimeter we have planted around 400 Berbris bushes in an effort to create some definition and keep weeds out and these are growing strong. We have used grass clippings as a mulch inbetween and around each bush to make weeding easier and it has helped loads.

At the recommendation of a local friend, we have also started to use wood chippings as a mulch covering in the borders to help keep the weeds down. The best thing is we have found a wood yard that lets us load up and takeway some chippings. The owner would not accept any Euro payment and even seemed disgusted when I presented him a bottle of fine wine in thanks. Perhaps my choice of wine was not agreeable!!

Making Friends

Over the months we have made a number of local friends and none is more reliable than 'Applebee' or her real name is Cici, but her appetite for apples gave rise to Joshua giving her an english name.

The funny thing is she responds to us calling her by the english name and waits at the bottom of the garden for us to give her a treat!.

Project Completion and our first night at Grange Grise – 25th July 2006

Well, the day of our arrival had come and it was wonderful to see everything we had agreed, actually complete!

The Oak Staircase was in and looked great, Whilst the upstairs bathrooms were not complete, this was because I had only asked S.C.C.L to do the Tiling in the bathrooms in June and we had to wait for the tiles to be delivered. However, we had the downstairs shower room ready so we did have some facilities to use.

We were able enjoy our first holiday of many to come, staying in our own beautiful home in France and enjoy a different type of life.

Our experience of acquiring the Grange and going through the renovation project has been exciting and very enjoyable. It has been problem and hassle free, so we have been fortunate and our experience has been nothing like the many horror stories often heard.