il fait chaud!

The weather has been extremely hot here. Over 100F. So if we want to get any outside work done, we have to race outside as soon as we get up and work as long as we can stand it. This morning I weeded my rose garden and some other small beds, and trimmed a large hedge.

My husband is chopping down trees and making firewood each day . . . he's been here a week and a half and we have enough wood for about 4 fires! Being self-sufficient is HARD WORK . . . as our Dear Bush-Whacker in Chief would say.

We have a friend who isn't in good health, who relies on firewood for his heat (he also doesn't have any running water but the French government is about to install water, a bathroom, and an elevator for him now . . . talk about great health care). Before my husband started chopping wood, I volunteered that we would chop wood for our friend to get him through the winter. I thought my husband was going to immediately leave me and head back to the U.S. when he found out how much wood our friend uses in the winter . . . I think our friend needs four cords.

But it's too beautiful and peaceful here so my husband isn't too interested in going back to the States . . . so now he's out chopping wood, and I'm stealing a few minutes to post. We're working on ordering a new computer for me so I can blog without having to negotiate for screen time since he needs to have access to the computer for most all of the afternoon and evening . . . you know, to watch the Bourse.

We're about to have a little rash of visitors in the next three weeks, which will be fun . . . I just hope they're prepared to weather the heat with no air conditioning. If it's too much for them, I'll have to put their beds in the Moulin. It's very cool in there because the stone walls are about three feet thick. It's quite posh as it has a brand-new roof. The bats love it in there.

Speaking of animals, I have a snake in my little decorative pond in front of the house. I don't like snakes, but I'm getting used to this one . . .every now and then I catch him with a big tadpole stuck in his craw.

A big lizard ran into the kitchen yesterday and I have no idea where he is now. I don't like reptiles at all, but there are so many lizards crawling around here that I've learned to quit jumping whenever one darts out in front of me.

We have a cute family of ducks out back in our mill pond. This morning when I looked out the window, I caught the cat Sirk, eyeing the pond. I hope he leaves the little ducks alone. I love watching them skoot around on the water turning every which way because they don't really have an agenda to follow.

There's a huge rat-beaver type thing in the mill pond. I saw him surface yesterday and I would say that the experience was on the frightening side . . . akin to seeing the Loch Ness Monster. I was walking through the woods along the canal last week and I heard this HUGE rat-beaver thing jump into the water . . . it sounded like a large human jumping in, the splash was so loud.

Yesterday, we found some interesting feces deposited near our house. It was full of large seeds, like cherry pits. We described our prize find to a neighbor and he said it was a wild boar. There is a huge male boar that I saw last year, right behind our mill, so maybe it's prowling around at night.

If it sounds like a jungle here, it really is with the humidity, the crickets and frogs chirping constantly, hundreds of birds singing, and thousands of bees swarming a large flowering tree near our house.

Our cleaning lady was dropped off this morning by a rather good-looking man. I hope he's good to her and is "a keeper". . . she just went through a divorce and was hurting a lot . . . she maintained her cheerfulness throughout the ordeal, but seems to be exhibiting a much deeper happiness now.

Yesterday we went up to our British neighbors to swim in their gorgeous new pool and had a good time. Note, for all you francophobes: the French are too polite to tell you anything negative about Americans . . . the British aren't! They're fond of pointing out that we're two peoples separated by a common language.