Le Couvent Diary

First a new roundabout appeared at the Pezenas end of the village, by the Cave Cooperative, last summer. It was pretty ugly, and well, just round. Then another popped up at the other end of town on the road to Gabian - slightly prettier this time, with lots of decoration in the middle - as is usual for French roundabouts. As if that wasn't enough new pavements and a squillion laurier roses found their way along the road to Neffies - Avenue Henri Mas.

At the end of the summer all the pavements were torn up, heavy machinery caused chaos in the main road, traffic was diverted round various routes (one of which saw pantechnicons wedged on the sharp bend by the bank) all of which were fairly disastrous and nearly caused the local garde champetre a heart attack. No two days saw the same road diversions as each 'plan' was as flawed as the next.

Then just before Christmas the first roundabout had lots of new planting and interesting stonework installed to end its summer-long building-site look.

The reason for this flurry of activity? Yes, the municipal elections. Every six years towns elect a new council and mayor. So they hang around doing nothing obvious for five years then make major changes in the sixth year. We're about to start voting on 9 March (it's a dual-pronged process) so Monsieur le Maire recently sent to every household a newsletter giving details of all the major achievements of the council. Just to remind us.

Anyway, for those of you who've stayed at Le Couvent, Roujan before, we hope you like the changes. Just watch out for the axle-high speed bumps all the way up the main street. Oh and we're not alone, the same phenomenon can be seen in all the towns and villages around here - and probably throughout France.

It'll be a relief when the elections are over, then we can all go back to sleep.

We're about to start preparing the Le Couvent gardens for summer. The current warm weather is forcing on the roses, so the pruning is pressing. The main job, however, is weeding. I find the rule below quite helpful, although frustrating. 

When weeding, the best way to make sure you are removing a weed and not a valuable plant is to pull on it. If it comes out of the ground easily, it is a valuable plant.

We've had our lovely Cambridge friends Sarah & Dawn visiting for the past three days. No-one gets to stay while Le Couvent is closed during the winter unless they put in a bit of work, so they pruned olives, bushwhacked thistles and planted salad & strawberries.

 

Their reward for all this work this was taking us out to lunch in Meze where we had stunning shellfish looking out over the sparkling sea. The Picpoul de Pinet was almost a finely chilled as the sea. Ali & I passed on the latter. Our sweet guests got soaked, but reckoned it most refreshing.

Hope you got home safely - come back soon eh? Happy birthday Sarah!