Since the warmer weather is finally here and my teaching load is lighter in this semester, I have more time to dabble in the garden. It means that I can embark on producing more homegrown fruits and vegetables. If you have read my previous posts, you would know that the former owner left behind an …
Through the dining room window of the holiday house, I can see a shroud of mist floating lazily around the mountain peak, 500m. Accompanying the mountainous view is the incessant chirping of the birds for the past half an hour or so. Not soon after, the morning symphony is intruded by the ringing of the …
Spring is here. After four months of days with really short daylight and miserable weather (grey skies, rain and cold), is it a wonder that the blue skies, the warm gentle sunshine, and the green vegetation fill me with such joy? It’s a bonus when you come across golden fields of rapeseeds. The small four-petaled …
The second batch of oak leaf lettuce, flourishing in my garden. I have finally decided to try the laitue feuille de chêne or oak leaf lettuce from our garden. It was planted end of last year, sometime in October or November. However, for no good reasons, I continued to buy lettuce from supermarkets and not …
During the holidays, we usually drive to another part of the country and rent a holiday house or what’s called a gîte. If the holidays last more than a week, we prefer to stay in the mountains, either in the east in Vosges or the southeast in the Alpes. If the holiday is shorter, we …
Thanks to the former house owner, I am now enjoying the flowers of her labour. It’s our first spring in the house that we bought last July. Since we only moved into the house in July, we have never had the chance to get acquainted with the spring flowers that were planted in this 300m² …
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We are now one week into 2022. Hélas, the Covid-19 pandemic is still here. As for my personal life, the biggest change is that I have upgraded my humble abode—from an apartment to a house. To catch you are with what happened since my last podcast (October 2020!!!), I have decided to do a 2020 …
Holidays have almost begun! Today is the first day when I don’t have to teach at the university. The university classes restart on 3 Jan. Well, I say ‘almost’ because I am still technically teaching until early next week, but only the few private students that I have and through video conference. Moreover, I still …
I am declaring that the winter is officially here. It started snowing this morning, albeit for only a couple of hours. Through the double-glazed panes of the bedroom window, I could see that the snow was falling rapidly, but it looked more like wet snow which would not accumulate. True enough, most of the snow …
It was half way through autumn and I still had not found a jardinier or a gardener. For the past few months, I had been looking after the garden myself–weeding and pruning—I didn’t mind doing that. In the recent weeks, thanks to the frequent rains, I was actually spending more time uprooting dying plants and …