Wednesday 10 March 2010

Can We Have Spring Now?

Please??

It has been a bit cool of late: yesterday, although the temperature got to a whole 4°C, the wind gave a it a real feel of about -5°C. This meant that I spent the whole day inside: all the little jobs I have to do are outside, and I am not quite ready to start the big jobs yet.

The little jobs include finishing the bracing of the grape vine trellis in the orchard, digging a hole for the clothes line post, washing Célestine, pigeon proofing the ex-window above our front door, painting the garden gate, painting the storeroom shutter, sanding back the shutters for the bathroom window, and a dozen other things that need doing - outside.

The grape vine trellis is only half stressed.
Compare this to how it was after the storm
The big jobs are too numerous to list, but include putting framing and reinforcement for the single skin brick walls in the guest bedroom and bathroom, and sorting out both bathroom floors. You will notice that these are all inside jobs. All are jobs that are almost but not quite ready for me to start; we have Stéphane coming over this evening to have a look at the walls, and hopefully he will be helping me fix them sometime soon. He has restored houses before, has worked in the hardware industry, and is a furniture maker by training. This should make him very useful!

The street at the top of the Place des Halles is still
closed after the storm (which was over a week ago)
damaged the buildings lining it.
Until then I am still struggling with PHP scripts (let me assure you, if you don't know what they are, you really REALLY don't want to know) for the website, planning a publicity campaign for the business, and trying to chose a handbasin unit for the bathroom. And learning French whilst trying to stay warm.

Which is just about where we came in...

Simon

Edit: 15 minutes after this blog entry appeared it started to snow. I guess this means I will not be working outside again!

3 comments:

chm said...

Winter seems to have been very harsh everywhere. Here in Southern California, in my opinion, the winter has been colder, or not as warm as usual. We've had a "lot" of rain and daytime temperatures have been below normal most of the time. As I understand it, the culprit is El Niño, that warm spot of water somewhere in the Pacific. It messes up the weather all over the world. I don't know if La Niña is any better. But she is frigid! I'd take warmer anytime!

The Beaver said...

Bonjour "cousin",

"Winter seems to have been very harsh everywhere", except for us in Canada. Didn't have to be outside a lot to remove the snow or ice though the mercury dipped under the average in December ( unusual) and January. The farmers are complaining in the Prairies for lack of snow. El Niño was responsible for the lack of good snow and rain during the Winter Olympics also.

Ken Broadhurst said...

No snow here in Saint-Aignan today, but it has been overcast and very cold. We are right on the snow/no-snow line, according to Météo France, with snowy conditions to our southeast.

I'm tired of this weather. It's hard to do anything outside. One week from tomorrow, I'll leave to fly back to North Carolina for a two-week visit with family. I hope that the weather here will have improved by the time I get back in early April.

Bon courage. I hope the snow didn't continue or accumulate.

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