Summer’s end

Before supper this evening DH and I were sitting at our somewhat shabby garden table on the grass in front of the house, enjoying a drink and the slightly hazy sunshine. The grass (or rather the mixture of grass, clover and plantain, which normally passes for a lawn in our part of Normandy) was newly-mown after my exertions earlier in the afternoon, and we were enjoying its scent and the sound of the birds. A lovely summer’s evening after the damp and even thundery evenings we have had recently and one of the last we have to enjoy before our return to the UK next week.

Yet it doesn’t really seem like summer any more. I know it’s still August, but somehow it feels as though autumn has come early this year, just as spring did. The grass around the cherry trees is already patterned with early-fallen leaves and the espaliered pear tree on the front wall of the house is laden with more and bigger pears than we have ever seen on it. Granted they are rock-hard and only edible after long simmering, but they are so large that they are starting to fall already, as are the apples, both eating and cider. Just like the grape harvest further south, the apple harvest is early this year and it is a bumper one. Suddenly autumn tasks are invading the last days of summer.

As I was making the soup for supper, I looked out of our north-west-facing kitchen window and realised that the sun was setting behind the apple tree to the left, rather than over the field ahead, a sure sign of the days drawing in. So summer is ending and what a varied summer it has been.  

A summer of a lot more rain and a lot less sun than we would have wished, yet the result is a bigger crop of fruit than I can ever remember seeing.  A summer of visitors, whose visits, luckily for them, coincided with the best of our weather.  A summer of quiet, rainy days at home with just the two of us, interspersed with strenuous bursts of activity in the garden when the weather allowed.

A summer of catching up with friends whom we only see here, of weekly meetings of the local craft group, where I’ve done a lot of chatting and even a fair amount of knitting. A summer of watching our litter of feral kittens grow and become more adventurous and self-reliant and gradually a little less wary of us. A summer in Normandy, like and yet unlike the ones which have preceded it.

And now, like the swallows, we are preparing to depart, though in our case we’ll be heading north, not south. Tomorrow, before the rain returns later in the week, we’ll be picking apples to take home with us, apples which will see us through the winter. Then will come the packing and the goodbyes and the tugging up of the little roots which we always manage to put down during each of our summers here. This time next week we will be back in Wales, sorry to leave Normandy, yet glad to be home again for a while, before setting off on the next episode in our peripatetic retirement. 

Gosh – August already!

Help, where has July gone? Life has been so busy lately, what with gardening (between the downpours) visitors, our local fête communale last weekend (for which the sun shone!!) and now having Grandson#3 to stay for a week all by himself for the first time, that time for blogging, or even just reading my favourite blogs, is practically non-existent. So while he is happily chortling at Wallace and Gromit with DH, here is a quick sign of life from the Transit household and a promise to catch up with you all as soon as time permits.

For the cat-lovers out there I’m happy to be able to report that all four kittens are well and growing rapidly, though we very rarely see them all together and sometimes don’t see any of them for days. We were extremely surprised and relieved when the tortoiseshell kitten reappeared after so long. She has turned into a real beauty, with striking, black-rimmed eyes reminiscent of a silent film star at her most sultry (eat your heart out, Theda Bara…) but, like her siblings, is still ready to turn tail and hide if we come too near.

For art-lovers I have other news, and that is that we now have two lovely small watercolour paintings of our French house and the kittens’ woodshed, thanks to my next-to-youngest sister, who came with her husband on a visit over the fête weekend. On their last afternoon she sat out in the garden with her paints to capture her vision of them, which I’d like to share with you. So, until next time, here is our small corner of Normandy as seen through the eye of an artist.  If you look carefully, you may even see the kittens. J

Echoes of conflict

Looking out of our living-room window at the peaceful pastoral scene beyond the garden, it's almost impossible to imagine how very different things were in this corner of Normandy nearly 70 years ago. One of the enduring fascinations of spending part of every year here is discovering the history of the place and, in particular, learning how these peaceful fields and hills and villages were so viciously fought-over in the struggle for the freedom of Europe.

It’s ironic in some ways that I, who so love ancient buildings with their profound atmosphere of history, should end up buying a cottage in an area where many (if not most) of the buildings in the little towns and villages post-date World War 2, being built to replace those which were bombed and shelled into rubble during the fighting. Even our own little house had to be partially rebuilt, after being hit by a shell in a tank battle during the German counter-attack in August 1944.

I can tell you that it is deeply sobering to pick up and browse an academic study of the campaign and see how many references there are to the battle that raged for days through our small village, as the American forces struggled to contain the German Panzer offensive. It is even more sobering to visit the war memorial in the graveyard which surrounds the rebuilt church and see how many civilians from the village’s tiny population are listed alongside those who fell in battle.

The old church in the early 20th century

Drawing of the rebuilt church

On Wednesdays we often go to the big weekly market at the nearby town of Saint-Hilaire-du-Harcouët. With a population of about 5000 it’s one of the largest of the market towns in this sparsely-populated area, though by English standards it's little more than a large village. Yet because of its strategic position on a crossroads between important north-south and east-west roads, the centre of this small town was virtually destroyed in a single night, when on June 14^th 1944 the Americans bombed it as part of the Allied effort to disrupt road and rail links and prevent the enemy bringing more supplies and troops to the front. The same story can be told of other neighbouring small towns like Mortain and Sourdeval, both of which suffered immense damage in a very short space of time.

Aerial view of Saint-Hilaire after the bombing

Saint-Hilaire church today

Our shelves are gradually accumulating a collection of books and pamphlets portraying both the violence and complexity of the conflict and the huge damage it inflicted on people and buildings. To browse the old photos of places we know well and see how much has been lost, and how much painstakingly reconstructed, deepens our affection for an area which seems more like home all the time.

To talk to our French neighbours who experienced the war, or who heard their parents describe their experiences, brings home to us that history in our part of southern Normandy isn’t to be found so much in ancient buildings (though some do survive) as in the memories of those who lived through it all and in what they so laboriously rebuilt from the ruins of their homes and their past history. 

The war may have ended before I was born, but in Normandy there is still a deep awareness and respect for what was endured, both by those who lived here and those who fought, and often died, to liberate them. The echoes of conflict are still very audible to those who listen for them.

Kittens in the woodshed

Last Thursday was Bastille Day here in France, and after all the rain earlier in the week the sun was kind enough to put in an appearance for us. With it being a holiday I couldn’t disturb our neighbours' peace by mowing the grass, so decided just to do some tidying-up around the garden and enjoy the welcome sunshine.

We’d seen nothing of the kittens in the woodshed for days – hardly surprising, really, given how wet it’s been – so it was lovely to go round the corner of the house and see a small pair of ears sticking up out of a hollow in the woodpile.

As quietly as possible I dashed back into the house for the camera and spent the next few minutes gently edging as close as I could to the woodshed without alarming the owner of the ears. Finally I got close enough to see that there were in fact three pairs of ears, but sadly no sign of the fourth, which had belonged to a very pretty tortoiseshell and white kitten. It’s a hard world for feral kittens and we don’t think she’s made it this far.

They’ve grown a lot in the two weeks since we first spotted them, though they’re still being fed by their thin and frazzled-looking mother, who has now also started bringing them solid food to try. After they had been fed that evening, the kittens began to venture out and play in the grass near the woodshed. Unfortunately we were watching them through the window of the downstairs shower-room and it isn’t easy trying to take photos through the slats of a venetian blind, but I did my best.

If we were here permanently, I would be sorely tempted to try to tame these three little darlings, but as we’re not, I don’t feel I can interfere. All we can do is to leave them to be cared for and taught by their semi-wild mother and quietly admire them from a distance for their amazing beauty, grace and agility.  Me, a cat-lover? Perish the thought. J

The Seven Links Project

I was quietly browsing Google Reader with my coffee this morning, when I almost fell off my chair to find that Karen at Being Koy had nominated me for the Seven Links Project, which was started recently by Katie at Trip Base.

The aim (in Katie’s words) “is to unite bloggers (from all sectors) in a joint endeavour to share lessons learned and create a bank of long but not forgotten blog posts that deserve to see the light of day again”.

It gives the nominated bloggers a reason to look back over their output and, without too much agonising, to choose certain posts which they feel are worth highlighting. Once I recovered from the shock, I enjoyed reflecting over my as-yet limited list of posts and making my choice.

The rules are simple:

1. The Blogger is nominated to take part by another blogger
2. He/she publishes their 7 links on their own blog. One link for each category.
3. He/she nominates up to five more bloggers to take part.

The categories are very varied:

My most beautiful post   The day I fell in love

This post took me back to a turning-point in my youth and I enormously enjoyed writing it. Though I always try to write as well as I can, I found the words flowed particularly easily and did what I wanted them to, in terms of evoking that long-ago experience and its life-changing significance for me.

My most popular post   It really depends what you mean by popular. J 

In terms of page-views, as measured by the not-always-reliable Blogger Stats, it is without doubt Where did the years go?  which was written on our daughter’s fortieth birthday and was also a contender for Most Beautiful Post for very much the same reasons I give above.

In terms of comments it has to be A sentimental old fool which started as a bit of fun, but really seemed to strike a chord with my readers.

My most controversial post   As my family could tell you, I don’t do controversy any more, at least not deliberately and in public, but Lessons for life (see below) deals with difficult subjects, as does A milestone birthday.

My most helpful post   A tree for all seasons 

(at least for people googling for photos of a tree (ash or not) year-round J As I don’t write an advice or information blog, this wasn’t easy, but the number of times a Google search has led people to this post leads me to hope that a few of them found it helpful, or at least mildly interesting.

A post whose success surprises me   I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills

This is one of my earliest posts and the first to which I managed to add photos. It is simply a reflection on how my life has always been lived among hills and I hadn’t anticipated how much this would appeal to others or how many page-views it would get.

A post I feel didn’t get the attention it deserved  Images

I didn't find this category very easy either, as I’m reluctant, not to say unable, to judge how much attention anything I write really deserves. However, in the spirit of the project, I mention this post.  It was written at the time when coverage of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami was filling the news media daily, so my small reflection on the human cost of this catastrophe went almost unnoticed.

The post I am most proud of   Lessons for life

This is another post reflecting on a significant time in my youth, in this case when, as a student of German, I worked for a few months as a ward orderly in a care home in Hamburg in the mid-1960s. I spent a long time on this post, trying to sum up what this experience had meant to me by remembering three women I had cared for and something of their stories, and feel I succeeded better than I could ever have hoped.

I realise I've snuck in an extra link, but trust I won't be excommunicated for one small sin....

5 bloggers

Among so many great bloggers it’s hard to pick just 5 to share something of their blog and their thoughts on blogging, but here is my list of nominees:

Wylye Girl @  The River Cottage Diaries  who gave me my very first blog-roll spot when I was just starting out – thanks, Wylye Girl. J

The Broad @  ABroad with a View

Rosie @  A Year down the Line

DB @  Dancing Beastie 

David @  The Vernacular Curate  (from whose blog I garnered a lot of useful advice about blogging)


Image via Wylio