la Charente Maritime
The colours of the Seudre estuary are breathtaking. Washed out greys, blues, greens – it’s a quiet, understated beauty.
The oysters have been farmed in this way for years: the salt marshes are dug out to form beds, known as claires, and the oysters grow there. Great mystery of life no397 – how does an oyster grow? Must go and find out. How do oysters breed? Hrmm. Why don’t I know this?
Shells everywhere – and the children want to take them all home. The car was a bit whiffy after a fortnight.
more photos tomorrow – the children went back to school this week and I’ve spent the last few days in a whirl of name labels and schoolbags and general chaos
Mornac-sur-Seudre
Two weeks with no phone, no internet, no television and no newspapers. Heaven.
My mum’s house is in the Charente Maritime, in an area which supplies over half of the oysters grown in France. Above is the nearby village of Mornac-sur-Seudre, which is classified as one of the most beautiful villages in France.
And below, the breathtakingly gorgeous 11th Century fortified church.
More photos and words tomorrow.
august at the allotment
I’d love to say that growing vegetables has had a wonderful influence on the children, and that they happily eat anything they’ve helped to produce at the allotment. But, er, it hasn’t. We have courgettes (aka zucchini) coming out of our ears, and the children think they’re evil. The neighbours are starting to hide when they see us approaching because I keep giving them away.
(Note to self for next year: seven courgette plants is overkill for a family of six. Oops.)
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a walk through the cornfields
I wanted my children to grow up in the countryside and understand where their food came from; collecting eggs, seeing cows being milked, knowing that the cute piggies were destined to become bacon.
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Martha Stewart Living in the UK (hooray)
I do love me a bit of Martha, and I’ve been reading her magazine for years. I have to confess that part of the magic for me is the American adverts, the strange cooking terminology (what is a stick of butter?) and the references to strange gardening zones which make no sense to someone who lives in England.
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our weekend
Or you could call it ‘I’m a bit busy doing stuff with the children so I don’t have any time to write all the things I have going round and round in my head’. Not quite so neat, that one, but sums it up.
Hope you’re having a lovely weekend.
hens in the garden
First, catch your bugs. Yum.
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growing children in the garden
So the whatever it was in the big border hasn’t flourished – well, I’ll move it in autumn. And the plant I imagined would fill the gap in the corner was devoured overnight by slugs. Never mind.
weekend ramblings
marvelling at how our allotment can continue to grow,
despite the driest summer I can remember in years.
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