Féte du Travail in Rochefort

It's been a while since my last post (about six months to be completely honest!) but now that the warmer weather has returned so have I!  

I've had a very busy winter working on the renovations of our town house in Cognac with my husband Spike and building the stock levels back up for my Etsy Shop after a very busy Christmas period.

The glorious weather has made us concentrate on the courtyard of our house and to my absolute joy we have installed a second hand fountain that I found online a few months back.  There's still so much to do but having planted up the flower beds it's a good start (although our puss 'Raoul' seems determined to squash my endeavours).

Still very much work in progress but Jakie doesn't seem to mind

This May Day weekend (Fête du Travail) we had a choice of so many flea markets in our region it was difficult to decide which to visit but eventually plumped for a brocante held in the pretty town of Rochefort.

I was delighted to come across some yarn bombing while we were there and long may this trend continue!

The bandstand near the flea market is simply charming

The sun was out and the flea market was full of interesting trucs that I snapped up and are soon to make an appearance in my shop.

An eclectic mix of trucs and so many bits and bobs to sift through

Here's just a small selection of my many buys from Rochefort that are waiting to be processed.

It's a tough job but someone's got to do it!

Voila... An Instant Terrace

This past week instead of concentrating on my Etsy shop (again!!!) I've been outside with Spike trying to knock our terrace into shape.  We thought that while the weather was good we would attempt to create a little sanctuary away from the ongoing building work in the house.

We started off with a genuinely blank slate and having painted the railings black and planted the beds on the top of the walls with lavender (in the hope of a kind of hedging effect) Spike laid some tiles at the end of the terrace.

We then erected a gazebo that was bought a while back from a local supermarket when it was on special offer.  It was a bit of a squeeze so we chopped down one of it's legs so that it could rest in the bed on the top of the wall (thank goodness it wasn't very expensive).

After a short break in order to recover from the inevitable tension caused by a married couple putting up a gazebo the next stage of the transformation was great fun.  If you've never had the unusual pleasure and instant gratification of unrolling a lawn I can highly recommend it.  I bought some astro-turf from a specialist when I was last in England and it came complete with little brown bits to give it a more authentic look (I can feel the wave of disapproval from proper gardeners from here... happily the dogs seem to love it so that's all that really matters).

We then edged our lawn with some gravel before adding a couple of dwarf apple trees, a bench and a few planters here and there (more to come).  We also put out a couple of new sun beds that will one day be relocated to much roomier courtyard (when it is eventually finished).

We are both thrilled with our new terrace and are finding it quite hard to get on with any work as the pull of such an inviting space is very strong.  The lawn is not only soft and bouncy but it is also hard wearing and toe tinglingly (not sure if that's a word) warm when the sun is on it. We have also already enjoyed a couple of unapologetically smug meals under the gazebo. 

The only problem with our new and improved terrace is that it makes the courtyard look even worse than it did before.  Unfortunately this part of the renovation will have to wait until the barn roof has been fixed and numerous trenches have been dug across the courtyard for drainage pipes and electric cables. So for the meantime I will just have to try my best not to look down!