NO need to raise the ransom...

I have had several emails to see if I have been kidnapped.......I know I haven`t blogged but it`s just been a bit loop the loop here at the chateau!

We are having a wonderful Summer and sunrise and sunset across the marsh are breathtaking.

 We have had hosts of guests and the chateau has been a conveyor belt of friends, family, suitcases, travelling cots, baby gates, barbeques, beach days, brocanting, renovations and pumpkin pampering!

 Paddling pools for the youngsters have been inflated and then thrown away and replaced each time Charles Le Baron sees one as he cannot resist digging his claws in!

We had a birthday party in the garden for our 4 year old grand daughter which saw Mark up into the early hours trying to draw a donkey for a "pin the tail, on the donkey" game. All I can say is that if there is by some chance , anywhere in the world,  a poor creature that looks like that it should be put out of its misery.

 The party was a very girly affair in the fabulous sunshine with the most amazing cup cakes produced by my friend Jan who is a superstar in the baking department. They looked so good all together that I became slighty possessive about them and didn`t want them to be eaten!

The chateau attic textiles are still in heaps everywhere in various stages of cleaning, drying or being beaten into submission and I have been promised more in the weeks to come.To that I say " Merci Monsieur....keep bagging them up and shipping them my way !!".  My only dilemma is that there are some stunning single curtains so should I sell them or wait to see if their other half arrives?

Sir Digbert has become completely deaf and we are now communicating by sign language and it seems to work well.  He keeps his eyes on my face and I keep my eyes on where he is wandering to and spend my life running after him as he can`t hear me call him back! Whilst the hay is being gathered and brought in off the marsh I have been frantic he will not hear a tractor approaching and might get squashed and then I will have to terminate a local farmer. I shall then be writing my blog from a prison in Paris.

The renovations here continue and hopefully we will be having two extra bedrooms soon. With the good weather we are concentrating on doing the outside building jobs while we can. Sometimes the marsh tries to take the garden back and we have to beat it into submission! I know the marsh was here long before the chateau was built in 1838 but it can at least let me have a little morceau for my lawn!

The Venice garden is still half built and once the chateau becomes less like an asylum we will get back to the wall building.

In the Spring I stupidly threw down the gauntlet to our friends to see who could grow the biggest pumpkin for Halloween. Already there are some enormous contenders and I have to confess that as yet I don`t even have a pumpkin to show! There has already been espionage and attempted eliminations within the ranks. Our attempts to detonate a particularly large specimen of a friend was rumbled! 

Some growers are going to some amazing lengths to protect their pumpkin patch.

 I have lots of leaves and flowers but nothing to show for my efforts...not even a pea sized pumpkin!  I am putting on a brave face by telling the others that they have peaked too soon but behind closed doors I am sobbing into my faded florals!

A la prochaine mes belles, any pumpkin forcing hints will be gratefully received!

xxxxxxx