Three Weeks To Go

Not sure why I am obsessed with the weather but yesterday was beautiful...cold but again one of those perfect blue sky days. I drove in to Bridgewater to work on my wireless skills.... I am accomplishing the most rudimentary....am sending and receiving thru Gmail and can access this blog all quite easily. Tried to listen to CBC. Could easily do CBC2 but was unable to get onto CBC1 so I will keep trying with that. On the drive in from home to Bridgewater a large red -tailed hawk flew out from a tree stand in front of me...wings spread..all the colour patterns evident. Got me thinking about what I would be missing this year ...Spring in Nova Scotia.... I will miss the Loons and their call in the Spring as they mate.I might even miss seeing the ice come out of the lake...something we make bets on every year for fun.I will miss seeing my daffodils spring forth and certainly my tulips...however, my landlord in France tells me the roses will be out there soon.I will be very late planting my garden...vegetable and annuals but actually I am sometimes late doing that anyway and I am not sure how significant a lead one gets by planting in May anyway. I will also miss seeing the sun setting further and further toward the west as we get closer to the summer. It's fun to see it break free of a block of trees and start setting over the lake in complete view. I will also miss the start of the blackflies and if it is warm maybe the bulk of the season for those little pesks...am I sad about that? NO...just that I will miss a fair portion of it.
However, by missing all that I will gain some things..like the small strawberries that start in mid April in France. I will send a picture as I love the way they pack them...so orderly compared to how we do berries... but then they are a completely different shape. I am not going to start on a list of my anticipations....but it will be warmer and flowers will be blooming far earlier than here.
I had a major set back in my preperation this week. We returned home on Sunday evening from a basketball weekend in Halifax to a basement full of water ..about 3 inches...and it was 9 o'clock at night. If you go back to a past website you will see that I talked about cleaning out the basement! How serendipitous...most of what was sitting in water was stuff I was getting rid of...except for boxes of pictures I was going to sort and they were pretty wet...well, and years of Income tax data...who can be sad about that...oh yes and sheets I had packed in cardboard boxes and had stored on the floor in the cedar closet...wow does all that stuff wick. So I have been busy washing sheets, drying out picturs and there were lots, and literally mopping up the basement. What happened? Well our plumber diagnosed the problem right away that night...a blocked drain pipe from the perimeter drain around the foundation...blocked with ice and silt There had been a huge rain on Saturday and the blocked pipe would not let the water drain away so it backed up into the basement drain..The next morning a fellow arrived with this fantastic home made ,basically, piece of equipment that sprayed hot water and moved up the pipe breaking up the ice and cleaning out the silt. As soon as it was unplugged the water in the basement started to flow and within an hour was basically gone except for a few bucketsfull caught in basement vallies. This is where my mopping came in.
Anyway beautiful days let me put the sheets on the line and except for drying pictures and income tax stuff we are on our way to recovery and a,better knowledge of things that can go wrong in the country and who is there to fix it.
One last note before I sign off for this post...an author by the name of Colette has been on my radar for a number of years as someone I would like to know more about and read....just have not got around to it. However, last week in taking a look at the latest Frances Mayes book on travel...she had a chapter on visiting Burgundy and the birthplace of Colette....Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye. So off to John Doulls second hand bookstore I went and found a somewhat biography of Colette by Allan Massie plus the Claudine books by Colette herself about her childhood. Mayes told me there is a museum in Saint-Sauveur...a Colette Museum...s0 I have another destination. Those of you not sure of who Colette was will have heard of GiGi, that wonderful American movie with Maurice Chevalier. Well Colette wrote the book that the movie was based on. She wrote many many books lots about her childhood and with very little education dominated the writing circle in France in the early 1920's plus. So I have more books to take...must leave room for clothes etc.
That is the end except to say that the first night in Beaune I am being treated to dinner by friends now, former guests of the B&B, who will be in the area having just picked up their new Mercedes in Stutgaart..not sure of the spelling there but I know you know what I mean. Enjoy the DAY!