No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

I postponed putting up the “Samedi Soup” post because I thought my husband would give me some photos to post. As you can see, he hasn’t figured out how to get them on to the computer. But our friends Jacques and Odile spent the night and took photos of the sheep this morning, so as soon as Jacques sends me the photos I’ll post them. I know you’re all excited to see Blanche and Soixante-Douze.

Today the weather was gorgeous and warm. My husband wanted to sit in front of the fire this afternoon, but I nagged him into going outside telling him that it was a shame to sit indoors when the day was so perfect. He ended up cutting firewood with his chainsaw. I cut my rose bushes; I tried Blanche’s new red sheep halter on her in an attempt to groom her but she would not cooperate; and I played in my compost pile. If you don’t compost your lawn clippings, leaves, banana peels, salads, old vegetables, you’re missing out on the thrill of seeing all that ‘garbage’ turn into beautiful black dirt. When I first arrived here, I bought bags and bags of potting soil. Now I make my own . . . and it’s biologique.

This December, I was surprised to receive a call from our Dutch neighbor. His firewood got wet and he wanted to know if he could take ours. Of course, he would replace it. I said it was fine with me. When Craig went out today to cut the logs into smaller pieces, he discovered that all the wood that is in our wood shed is wet! The Dutch guy had just exchanged his wet wood for our dry wood. He had taken ALL of our dry wood; and we had a lot of it. I thought he was just going to take SOME of our wood, and would replace what he took with dry wood.

I pointed out to my husband that we tend to come out on the short end of any good deed we do for this guy. Last summer, he asked me if he could park his old Citroen in one of our open sheds . . . for the unstated reason that we had so much junk around our property the car wouldn’t alter our landscape, whereas his place is so neat, the car would disturb the carefully manicured ambiance. I said it was fine with me.

He parked the car, and all was fine. It’s one of those funky 80’s Citroen, so it did lend an air of French authenticity to our farm. In October, his running Citroen broke down, and he began showing up here every day to take parts off of the old Citroen. Well, when we arrived here a week ago, we found a Citroen chassis sitting under our open shed with no wheels, no nothing – just a chassis. My husband just left to go “talk” with the man about the chassis, to ask him when he plans on taking it away. We’re finally starting to throw our junk away . . . since Monsieur Reste left, we’re free to decorate the place the way we want.