Patches’s Patience Produces Results

As I mentioned in a post a while back, Patches sits and watches the mole hills, ever hoping that she will catch whatever is in there. Well today it looks as though she struck lucky as I found her sitting very proudly beside a dead mole. Whether she did actually catch it or it died for some other reason I will never know but much as I wish the moles no harm, I do hope it is the one that has been marching across my front lawn. Looking at the number of molehills I think I’ve got an army of them out there.

The bulk of today was spent on two things. Firstly being a Thursday I spent the morning back in the prunery sorting the wood with Ann. We’ve now finished extracting, de-branching and chopping to length the wood that is large enough to use. To finish off we are putting all the branches into the middle of the rows so they can be mulched. Under the trees there is the remains of a straw mulch. When we clear out the branches we have to try and remove every bit of wood. This is to stop the ripe fruit from falling onto anything hard and bruising or splitting. It’s surprisingly time consuming work but one of those jobs that once you get into the swing of doing you can drift off into your own thoughts or just listen to the sounds of the birds , or rather this being rural France, the sounds of the cockerels in all the surrounding farms.

The afternoon was set aside to sort out the water pump. The first port of call was the large Terres du Sud (agricultural merchants) a few kilometres up the road. No they didn’t have a replacement pump of the same type. They did have something that would do the job but the connections would need bodging. They did however look at the pump and pronounce the motor as dead. Next stop was the independent hardware shop in Villeneuve where I got the new non-return valve. Bingo. Not only do they have an identical pump (which they are reserving for me) but they will look at the old pump and see if it can be repaired. So I’ll return on Saturday and find out the verdict. I did think seriously about buying the new one anyway, especially as it’s half the price I was expecting, (at 200€), but if this one can be fixed and I now know where to get a replacement, I will leave it this month as I have rather a lot of other expenditure due out. So I’m hoping it’s only another couple of days without water.

And aren’t friends wonderful. Ann offered to wash my work clothes as I’m down to the last set and invited me over tonight for a meal and use of her bath. So I’m a very clean and happy girl tonight. Not having the water really makes me realise what a precious commodity it is.