Battening down the hatches

A week has now passed since our return from the Sauternes.  A lot of end of season jobs have remained undone due to our grape picking.  One of the first jobs to tackle was to bring down our hanging baskets from the front of the house and empty all the window boxes.  All the geraniums have now been placed into old wine barrels where hopefully they will lie dormant until next April.  After lunch Monsieur Popeau arrived with a stere of oak to see us over the coming winter months.  All the logs are cut to 50cm which is the perfect fit for our insert fireplace in the dining room.  Two hours after their delivery the logs were beautifully arranged in our ‘dependance’ building.  The sense of security this brought was comforting and I said to myself “Come on winter, do your worst!”

Wood awaiting an insert