A discovery in the garden!

I have dug a little more today in our garden in between the showers, (was getting quite a sweat on) when I found about 4 potatoes my landlady must have forgotten to dig up! looks like they are Desiree's but not sure??? must ask her!

There would have been more tatties, but not knowing anything would be in there my fork had spiked the others to bits!


Oh well that saves me going to the shops tonight for Joshy's tea! he can have boiled potatoes with boiled potatoes and perhaps mash with the spiked potatoes! Poor kid what a rotten mum I am not feeding him properly!

Gardening time! - Please follow my Diary!

TODAY I will be starting my Gardening Diary for the year! I have a property, a large Longere divided into 3 Gites called La Maison des Fleurs, as the name implies, it is every summer full of flowers, the picture here was taken outside one of my Gites last year. The grounds of my place are approximately 1 acre, which makes for hard work to keep lawns mowed, weeds down etc. My property is for sale, but as our economic climate is so disastrous there is no real interest, which means I will be continuing renting out the gites.

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This year, I certainly will have my work cut out, as I have moved to be with my partner Keith and now live in Josselin in a rented house with a garden a totally different size being just a mere 6m x 12m approx. so much more manageable! I will be also concentrating a lot on making the 'smaller' garden a blaze of colour, and full with veggies, I find that an exciting prospect!

Here you can see the 'before' pictures of our rented place, as it stands today, rather dull and grey looking but hopefully in the coming months you should see a riot of colour developing!


These 2 pics show the area by the back door, which unfortunately does not get a lot of sunshine, mmmm got a lot of thinking what to put there that doesn't need a lot of sunshine! This is also the place where Keith has his very early morning contemplation along with the cats who can not understand why he is outside and not in a warm bed!

Poor fella has Central Sleep Apnoea and is up all hours in the morning, this morning it was 1am, 2am, 3am and so on - hence I would like to make this area very special for him, any ideas would be gratefully received! PS I will be doing a thread on Sleep Apnoea in the near future to make people aware of this debilitating disease.

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If I can fill my Gites, I will be employing someone to cut the grass at La Maison des Fleurs and generally maintain the garden ie cutting the hedges etc., I will still be concentrating on my flowers for there, but greatly reduced mainly my 10 hanging baskets. Have a look at an example of one of the 10 hanging baskets I made up for the front of my Gites one year - it looked stunning!

AN INTRODUCTION TO OUR FAMILY!

I thought I would start my first blog with an intro to my family with pics to back it up! I have lived in France for 8 years now with my son Joshy, having bought a beautiful 'chocolate box' style longere for Gite rental in another beautiful town nearby called La Gacilly, for those of you who may be interested, have a look at my website http://www.farmhousegites.com (will be doing a blog on my house soon). I am extremely happy here along with my love of gardening, reading, walking, photography and the computer.


Joshy and I moved to the beautiful medieval town of Josselin to be with and live with my partner Keith, we have lived in our rented house all together for 4 months now and loving it! Its great cos its only 2 minutes walk into the centre of town this is a real novelty to us, as we had both lived in the countryside before and needed a car - bit fattening though as its too easy to nip to the bakers every day!!!

Keith has lived here in France for 6 years, a little bit less then me, his interests when he is not working, is reading, writing, walking, computer and keeping his popular online diary up to date - now if you are feeling down and would like your spirits lifted or would just like to read a very interesting diary of an Englishman in France log on to http://www.bretondiary.com. a very worthwhile read!


Joshy is a very happy and content little boy living here in France, in fact he doesn't know any different really, as he started school here when he was nearly 5, so of course speaks French with no accent whatsoever - totally bi-lingual - doesn't it just make you sick! Keith and I will always have an accent! He adores his LEGO I will be doing a blog on him and his LEGO fairly soon.



Our 2 cats Sammy and Cindy are brother and sister, nearly 10 years old, they are lucky, they don't have a problem with the language! They are such laid back, lazy fat cats (Sammy that is - sorry Cindy didn't mean you) as long as they can get some attention, be fed and go to sleep they are happy! Its a novelty to Cindy at the moment sitting on the windowsill watching people and cars going by, she just cant make it out after being in the countryside!

Welcome to my Blog!

Hello I am Jilly, welcome to my Blog! You may well ask why I am called LUST IN BRITTANY! Well, I thought it was the best way to sum up my passion for my life in this beautiful part of France and everything that goes with it - be it the gentle pace of life, the friendly French, the space, the ambience and of course the wine!

Please follow my blog as I will be blogging hopefully 2 - 3 times a week. I intend to tell you about things that are very passionate to me, my utmost love is flowers and I will be keeping a journal of my garden from growing my plants from seed to them being planted and showing themselves off in all their glory! I will also be talking about my family and what we are up to, along with lots of pics to back up what I will be blogging about. Please feel free to respond to any of my postings, in fact I would love that as I would like to have a very active blog going and exchange ideas, perhaps even seeds etc.!! I look forward to talking to a lot of you on this great site! A bien tot!