Le Couvent Diary

 

 

It's a pretty sunrise here at Le Couvent on this, 1st May 2011. We're open again for the Summer season and the old house is looking glorious. The wine is in the chiller, the glasses are all polished, the rooms are spotless and sunny, the pool is glistening (if fresh), and all the roses are out ready to greet our first guests. We have people making their way here from Kent, London and Tasmania and we are very happy to be hosts to them and all the other lovely guests who are booked in this summer.

Bring on the aperitifs!

It's that time of year that I absolutely love. The sun shines, the flowers start bursting through. Everything is green and lush and we're back down to daytime tee-shirts. Whilst Ali works at getting the house in tip-top condition for our forthcoming guests I work on the garden and all the 'outside' things. Yesterday saw me getting the bikes ready. That meant replacing four collapsed inner tubes and a couple of tyres, cleaning the bikes and giving everything a good oiling. Here they are ready to roll:

 

 

 

The irises, roses and jasmine will soon be in full bloom

 

I'm delighted to see that we still have a full complement of bees hanging out in the crook of the virgin's arm way up on the roof:

 

 

 

And the vineyard vegetable garden's looking great:

 

 

 

We have a garden full of landscape gardeners today, along with a plethora of tools and chainsaws. It's that day in the year when the team from La Griffe Verte come in to prune the trees, rake away all the leaves and chop back the Banksia rose that irritates the fuel delivery man. (It scratches the top of his ancient petrol lorry)

By the time they leave the mico-coulier will have had a haircut of at least a third. That should please guests booked into the Orange bedroom who will find their mornings heralded by glorious sunshine and slightly less birdsong, we hope. The sparrows took up residence in it last year and produced a deafening dawn chorus all summer. Mercifully no one complained.

As a bonus of having the gardeners in, I get to have my lovely nephew, Josh, working here. He's now a fully qualified paysagiste and is studying for his Professional Baccalaureat.

I love it when the garden has a real tidy-up. It feels as though summer is not so very far away. Today it is clear and sunny and not at all cold. Tomorrow I have to go to Suffolk in the UK where I fear it will be as cold, wet and windy as forecast. Thankfully I'll be back by next weekend.

 

Yesterday we picked the white grapes. We don't have the right equipment to make white wine - you need a method of chilling the grapes quickly and as we have so few it simply isn't worth the outlay.




So we picked our Muscat petit grain, along with a few black and white eating grapes,  just for juice.  Ali & I were joined by four of our lovely guests; Nicolette, Frances, Kristin & Justin. (For one moment this morning we had Justin Gosling and Justin Swan in the house.)

 

 The pre-squish footwash

 

 De-stemming the grapes

 

Waiting to squish

 

 Treading the grapes

 

 The pre-sieved gloop

 

 Bottled

After removing the stems and treading the grapes we ended up with about 50 litres of juice which we gave to our B&B guests at breakfast and to any of our pals who'd take some. It's absolutely delicious, but only lasts a few days in the fridge before it would start to ferment. So we glug it merrily while it's around. Last night we had it with champagne. Nicky named the cocktail a Le Couvent Grappellini.

 

 

 

Just before we re-opened for the summer season I was planting geraniums and  petunias in pots all over the gardens here at Le Couvent. Imagine my surprise on finding a hen's egg when digging out an old plant in one of the pots by the pool. I lifted it out carefully and took it in to show Ali. I was reluctant to crack it open knowing how revolting it would smell if it had been there an age. So I ditched it.

 

 

The day after I returned to clean the pool. The newly planted flowers had been turfed out and a furious search had been conducted - in the neighbouring pots too. So what do you suppose had buried the egg there in the first place? It wasn't a guest from last year - we date all our eggs when we collect them from the nests. It wasn't our dogs since neither is allowed anywhere near the pool in case Flynn the Husky drowns. (He can't swim) It wasn't Ali and it wasn't me. Anyone willing to own up, or offer a suggestion?