Mad March weather 2012

Ok, this time last year, we were basking in wonderfully warm Spring sunshine. The birds were singing, garden in bloom, all was lovely.
Today, it's wet, cold, poor plants are struggling to flower, & the hedges are almost devoid of leaves after the minus double figure temperatures we had in February.
I have just heard that it's snowing in central Spain;
The world's gone mad!

Brrrr, the big freeze has arrived in France!

Well, in our part of France anyway, we have night time temperatures of up to -20°c and daytime temperatures no more than -8
Lots of snow & ice on the ground, and nowhere to go in the car as we can't get it down the hill.
So, any shopping has to be got on foot 5 kilometers away & back again.
The little birds are so hungry & the ground is as frozen as I've seen it, so putting food out three or four times a day has been the norm.
The Spring bulbs were just popping their heads up before all this freezing weather descended, so I'm hoping they will survive to see the warmth of the sun again. Whether I will, is another matter!

Chestnuts are falling on my head!

Ouch, it's raining sweet chestnuts at the moment. I can't walk anywhere around the garden without running the gauntlet of these little green spikey objects that drop from the trees like round bullets and do they hurt if they happen to bounce off my head!
They are indeed delicious roasted, but by the time I have collected them, prised them from their barbed casings, made a cut in each one so that they don't explode in the heat, roasted them & then burned almost all of my fingertips prising off the shell, well, I'm done for and the taste of a freshly roasted chestnut has suddenly lost its appeal.
I actually buy them in a jar at the supermarket. I know it's not really the thing, living in the French countryside as I do, but to preserve my sanity not to mention my hands, it's what I do.

The worst part of having chestnuts in the garden, is the lawn mowing.
There are hundreds of the things on the ground when I come to do the last cut of the season and as they coincide with the leaf fall, they combine in a prickly hedgehog like ball and conspire to choke and clog the mower chute, making it impossible to do the mowing.
Still, it's better to live in this lovely part of France and have small annoyances than to be banged up in the prison that is a city.