Living in the New House

This will be my first blog entry from the new house. I've been sleeping here a couple of weeks now and am very happy with my acquisition. Its ten pm, not dark yet, and I'm watching the bats flit past my window. The swallows just turned in for the night, and the bats have taken their place in the insect hunt. I'm looking out across the Orb Valley to the hills on the other side, very near and also a part of Roquebrun, although not the old village where I am. I'm posting a photo of it in daylight.

The house is quite livable as is, in spite of the fact that I have demolished all of the kitchen except the sink. It wasn't an old kitchen, it was done a few years ago by the previous owners. There wasn't an "original" kitchen here at any point, as the first cooking facility in the house would have been the fireplace, and its quite likely there was not running water in the house itself until the 1950's. There's an old sink in the entry way, but unfortunately its concrete and probably dates to no earlier than the 30's. Europe was behind the US for many years, in part due to the two world wars with their economic devastation, and things that we would date to the turn of the century are from the 30's to 50's. I've included a photo of the stove I intend to use here, which was in the "cave" (the basement), and which was in use at the time the most recent owners bought the house, about seven years ago. It looks like stoves that were made in the US in the 20's and 30's, but in fact is from the 50's. Note that it bears the classiest name in French stoves, but unfortunately is not one of the famous models. My kitchen is quite small, constrained by two foot thick stone walls, so I think this little Godin will be just fine.

I have many good views from the house. From the entry terrace, the view is of the tenth century tower (photo). The bedroom I'm using now, until the "grenier" (the attic) has been redone as a master suite, has a beautiful view of the river and bridge, and the salon overlooks the valley, with the bridge and river just hidden by the roof of the lower houses (first photo). This house is high up in the village, and is visible on many of the old photos and postcards of the village dating back to the earliest photos. I've posted a vintage photo which shows the house right in the center with my scribbly circle around it. It was once surrounded by houses, as it was not the custom to build a house that was not attached to other houses. Its neighbors are gone, so it stands alone and has done so for probably a couple of hundred years. Its not clear how old the house actually is, I hope to do some research on it. I believe it is built on the foundations of earlier houses and that some of the walls are also recycled. Its very close to the tenth century Carolingian tower, all that's left from a chateau of that period (photo of tower taken from my garden at the house). It probably would have included the property where my current house stands. One of my ruins has a vaulted cave (french for basement), partially filled with rubble, with another mostly covered vault visible at the back, which is connected to an even lower room or rooms, and I look forward to digging all of that out to see what might be there. The cave under my house has the outline of a fireplace on one of its walls, and holes in its ceiling that have been blocked up but once went to the current house above. The holes were for dropping food and trimmings down to the animals in the cave; the cave could also have been the living floor of a previous house, which became a ruin, after which this house was built, but the lower cave/house used as lodging for animals. Uncovering the layers could be incredibly interesting.

Speaking of what might be there: It might be a scorpion, or a very large spider. There is a lot of livestock on the premises. Fortunately the scorpions are not very poisonous, just a nasty sting, and they get no larger than 1-2 inches. There is a variety that is quite poisonous, but they are a different color and seldom seen in villages. However, virtually every rock on my property has a scorpion or two under it, and there are hundreds of rocks, probably thousands. There was one in the kitchen sink yesterday morning, and this morning when I opened a door into one of the bedrooms something dropped next to me, which proved to be a scorpion. They are beneficial, as they eat other insects, so I just put a glass over them and scoop them up and put them outside near a rock. Then there was the huge spider in the bathtub .....

I had child laborers here a few days ago. A friend of mine, Ella the veterinarian, has three children, twins (boy and girl) aged 12, and their sister, aged 13, who I hired for the day to help me get the rubble up the 33 steps from my front terrace to the little street above so that we could put it in a trailer and take it to the landfill. (Photos of entry terrace with rubble and after rubble removed.) They also brought a friend, a very nice French boy (Ella and her kids are from Cornwall but live here), and the four of them did more work than I would have imagined that children could do. They ran up and down the steps with heavy boxes and buckets of rubble, and when we finished that they hauled out all of the tree trimmings and ivy that I had piled in one of the ruins. I didn't think we would get that much done, but they were absolutely stellar. I recommend hardworking children to all of you. They are also lovely, bright kids and I enjoyed them very much. Will try to get them back for more assbusting spirit breaking work.

What do I do when I'm not working on the property? I help friends with their projects, like my friend Jan from England, who is having a new area of her property developed as an additional dining terrace near her pool. She's having most of the work done professionally, but we're doing some of the small stuff, like haul in a couple of tons of gravel with the trailer. I try to go to village events. I work in my vegetable garden by the river. I go to Beziers and buy stuff for the house, which always takes an entire day. Recently I bought a very nice antique iron and brass bed, in a kind of odd size, between single and double, cost me 25 euros. I had been sleeping on an air bed on the floor and each morning I wondered if I would manage to struggle up from the floor and get my coffee. I now have a real bed to sleep in. On Sunday I went to a couple of vide greniers (literally means empty attic), which are a cross between a garage sale and a swap meet, and bought a very nice large antique linen sheet, with blue embroidered initials in an arts and crafts style, which is my current bed cover. Its quite warm here now, no need for anything but a sheet at night. It looks very quaint and beautiful on my new bed. I'm still the Material Girl and enjoying bargain hunting at the vide greniers and the second hand places. One of my friends here has given me the Material Girl label, and she is so right. I just love Stuff.

There's just so much that's charming here. For instance, a swallow flying into your house looking for a place to nest. The vigneron going by on his tractor with his dog sitting next to him. The other vigneron who always waves and asks you how you are as he goes by, and stops to show you the picture of the huge dead sanglier he shot the year before, that killed several of his hunting dogs before he got it. The nearly ninety year old lady who I often see walking by my potager (vegetable garden) by the river, who always stops to talk to me and see how the garden is doing. The kind and friendly mother of the current young vigneron of one of the local independent wine domaines, who works in the family wine cave and must be in her late 70's. The very old man who goes by every morning in his deux chevaux truck to get bread from the bakery. The other very old man who rides his very old motorbike to his garden by the river every day, and manages to take care of it in spite of the fact that he limps badly and has trouble getting around. My former landlord, and now pal, Alain, who also rides his motorbike to the garden that we share, to take care of his chickens and vegetables. I don't mean to paint a picture of paradise, of course it isn't. But there is an air of authenticity that is difficult to find in larger cities, and more sophisticated areas. The people here aren't innocent or unworldly, they have newspapers and television, and know what's going on in the world. They just don't seem to care whether they drive a hummer or not.

My potager by the river is doing well. I think I wrote about it before. I'm enjoying working a garden that has probably been in production for five hundred years. I was told that the proof of the Moors having made it this far is that there are pillars of stone in many of the gardens, which were the bases for well sweeps, to raise the buckets of water from a deep well. Not that the remaining pillars are of Saracen construction, but that the idea arrived with them. Have no idea if its true, but its an interesting observation. Many of the gardens still have their rosary pumps, so called because they have a chain with tiny buckets on it like rosary beads, you turn the wheel and the buckets bring up the water and dump it into an iron channel which then goes into a reservoir so you can water. Very few of them still work, but there's a company in Provence that sells the parts to repair them and the instructions for doing so. We have one in our garden, but it doesn't work and since the garden is borrowed I would not invest in repairing the pump. Alain has a gas powered pump and we use river water. If I ever own a garden of my own by the river, I will try to get a rosary pump working. All riverside villages have their gardens by the river, called allotments in England. Villages not alongside rivers also have the gardens, arranged around the outside of the village, its a Medieval development pattern where the houses are clustered for safety, and the gardens are outside the village.

This is enough for now, I don't want to lose your interest ....