No blog last night as I had a night out with friends to celebrate my first anniversary. The next village has a good restaurant where you can get a four-course meal with wine for 16€. That is one of the most noticeable differences I’ve found between here and the UK. There is really good, home-prepared food available at very reasonable prices everywhere. Nearly always there is the set menu with two or three choices for the main course and desert.

Where we went there is always duck, one of the joys of being in this part of France, although I chose steak for a change last night. You settle for the night with no one hassling you, and enjoy the company of friends.

Yesterday while passing the inside/outside thermometer I stopped for a double take. The sensor is against a south-facing wall but even so, this is February. In the shade it was a relatively cool 20°C

This morning I visited the new Gamm Vert in Monflanquin. The publicity material for the opening included a jeton – a small plastic disc – that you place in a box and it tells you if you have won the main prize. Needless to say I didn’t but I like everyone else came away with a free packet of seeds. It was a bit of an expensive day there too as I had just received a 10% off loyalty voucher so made the most of it by buying 24kg of cat food plus the ingredients to make up the next batch of chicken feed, 10 posts to finish the supports for the kiwi fruit and raspberries and 6 meta posts in readiness for the first of the alpaca shelters I will have to build in the new paddocks.

In the afternoon I got on with pruning the remaining branches on the Reine Claude and the ordinary plum trees. They have both been drastically reduced in height; they could do with further trimming and shaping but I am going to leave that till next year after I’ve seen what re-growth occurs.

Before and after photographs for the Reine Claude.

Once the sun went down I decided on a short walk around part of the farm. The wheat is growing well and I thought this made a nice picture with the sunlight still glowing on the top of the rise above the farm.

From there I went along the new paddocks; here it was obvious that a second grass seed had germinated over the last couple of weeks. It would be nice if the rain forecast for next week were gentle and steady as the grass could do with a bit more water. What I don’t want is one of the really heavy deluges we can get that might wash the new growth from the soil.

As usually happens when I go for an evening walk I am accompanied, the cats seem to enjoy the stroll as much as me. This is on the way back up the drive; Hazel’s got sidetracked by something that might have moved in the hedgerow, so she’s dropped back. Patches is keeping an eye on Cid and waiting for him to pass so she knows that she’s not going to be attacked by him and Snowy is leading the way and daring Cid to try and take over as top cat.