Tag: gites

A Day in the Life

Woke a bit before 6 am this morning. Drank coffee outside on the porch and read an essay in Harper’s by Lydia Davis. She’s an author I’ve encountered many times in journals and magazines, and I’m pretty sure I have a story collection or two of hers somewhere? At any rate she’s writing about observation and the compulsion to write about her observations. She’s got a singular style and voice in her fiction and non-fiction, and does a lot of translation from the French–in fact I’m sure I read an essay by her about French translation at some point. I’m distracted while reading and observing our two cats who are climbing on me one minute, then chasing lizards the next. Lydia Davis is observing cows in her essay, and while I’m reading I hear a horrible guttural stegasaurus groan which I can assume is one of our goats even though it’s a new sound. The male has climbed along a narrow ledge atop a wall which has a metal chain-link fence built into it, at the top of which is a kiwi vine. While standing stretched out full length on his hind hooves to nibble kiwi leaves his hooves slipped off the wall. I rush over to find him being strangled by the kiwi vines with his horns stuck in the fence. I free his horns as he re-positions his hooves on the wall and immediately he is contentedly munching kiwi leaves again as if nothing happened.

At about 8 am guests who’ve rented one of our gite appartements–The Studio–check out. They are two cyclists off to their next destination after a one-night stay in Treignac. I pause my reading to strip down the bed and turnover the apartment for the next guests. Just as I finish hanging the clean sheets and towels from the washer our next guests arrive. They’ve rented The Loft gite for a daytime sleep-over as they are driveing some horrid 24-hour route. They check in at 8:05 and are planning to leave at 5pm. I wonder if they are actually going to sleep or if they are going to fuck. It’s our first overday stay as opposed to overnight stay. And, to complictate things we have a check-in in the same apartment 45 minutes after they are planning to leave. Things will be tight. We are used to it, however, as business has been brisk this year since January.

After checking in the new guests I hear the guttural scream again, and the male goat is once more dangling in the air with his throat tangled in kiwi vines. I free him once more.

I sit again and finish the Lydia Davis piece and then polish off the rest of the magazine. I realize I rarely write about day-to-day stuff anymore the way I used to on a previous and much more successful blog. Has my Muse deserted me? Have I lost interest? On the desk in my office is a pile of language books I put out back in February–I was adamant that I was going to do a daily study/writing routine and that immediately fell apart. Perhaps I’ll get it back together in the fall after tourist season quiets down.

Cliff

Cliff came ambling down Route de Gueret from the Brasserie, encumbered by three sacks and a backpack. We noticed him first because the dog stood to attention and her hackles rose, but Pat got there in time and the dog rolled over and showed her neck upon noting her lady’s displeasure. Cliff was allowed to approach with no danger to his ankles or eardrums.

As he got closer I realized who it must be. Cliff had contacted me weeks earlier via Google, where he found our website and sent me a message in French. From the grammar I could tell he was a confident speaker with a pretty good knowledge but was certainly not a native speaker, and after seeing his name I thought he must be a Yank or a Brit and I replied in English to the chat.

Cliff had requested lodging for two and a half months, he wasn’t sure when exactly, and he could only pay 25 euros per night because he was retired and on a budget. Of course that’s less than half of what we charge per night for our small studio rental! I told him I would need specific dates and that we already had bookings all over our spring calendar for both apartments, but I would send him some suggestions nearby. After a few back-and-forths via Google he said “well I’ll just come to Treignac around mid-April and we’ll figure it out.” I warned him that Treignac was out of the way and he should reconsider, and he replied that he’d been coming to France for 20 years, often simply showing up and finding a place to stay. His intention was to do so again. “I can camp in your garden if that’s OK.” Then I didn’t hear from him for a while and thought he’d given up.

I was immediately struck by Cliff’s age. I’d assumed he was early to mid 60s, but he’s actually 88 years old. To get to Treignac from his home in Kansas he’d flown to Texas, thence to London, thence to Paris, where he caught a train to Clermont-Ferrand, then a bus to Meymac, and in Meymac he hitch-hiked outside the Renault dealership without luck for several hours. Then he asked the Renault dealership for a piece of cardboard with which he made a sign. Immediately a woman picked him up and drove 26 km out of her way to bring him to town. Unable to find us via GPS she dropped him at the Brasserie next door, where the proprietors directed him to walk across the bridge. I’m almost 55 and that trip would exhaust me! While we had coffee in the kitchen our Frenchie Bou went out on the porch where we’d stowed Cliff’s bags, and a minute later she proudly marched through the kitchen with something in her mouth–an adult undergarment she’d pulled from his backpack pocket. Poor Cliff took this in stride and was more amused than mortified.

We had a bit of a scramble at first. We put Cliff up the first night but had guests checking into both apartments that weekend. So we moved him to a friend’s pilgrim hostile apartment for the following two nights, then back to us for two weeks. Now due to a previous reservation he’ll have to leave again, but we got him situated in a nice studio apartment in a rejuvenated vacation village at the top of town. They can accommodate his budget and host him for the next 2 months. He needed a spot where he could walk to town and to the grocery, and Domaine de Treignac fit the bill.

Cliff says he retired at 39 after making a mound of cash in the PR industry in Pittsburgh and NY and California, but then drank his money away. After sobering up, on $1200 a month social security he managed to save enough to do shoestring world travel a couple months a year by hitching and camping and relying on the kindness of strangers (one time he was adopted by a French actress and stayed at her place in Aix en Provence for two years).

Cliff has been everywhere and remembers dozens of small French villages, including many surrounding us in the Correze and Le Lot and in the Perigord and Dordogne. Of the villages we’ve both visited his memory is far more reliable than my own. He’s a vet who spent a few years in Seoul and when he told me he was an old Boy Scout I told him to help any ladies in town across the street. He said “I surely will, and right into my bed!”

We won’t make much money from Cliff’s stay because it’s been cold and he’s using the electric radiator. Even with the solar panels electric is very expensive. But it’s been amusing to hear his stories and see him each day and help him out with logistics. He’s always asking if he can do odd jobs or work in the garden, and when I say no he takes a stool and his kit into town to sketch and paint old houses and walls. Last night he emailed me a play he wrote about Marx, Carlyle, and Dickens.

Re-Wilding

Our lawn from its north end–the Vezere River is to the left, and the canal from the days when our building was a mill runs along the right.

We have 1.6 hectares of land along the Vezere River in Correze. That’s almost exactly 4 acres for those of you across the pond. About 2 acres is a relatively flat lawn, the rest is on very steep hillside including a section of forest.

It takes about 2.5 hours to mow the “lawn” here, which is combination of moss, lichen, weeds, dandelions, and about five different types of grass.

Last Thursday I noted how the bees and butterflies were excitedly flitting around the wildflowers in our yard, and decided not to mow for a couple extra days. Then on Sunday my wife invited a half-dozen people over for an impromptu garden BBQ. It’s really hard for me, raised as I was in the USA, to have an “unkempt” lawn when there are guests over, and as tourist rental hosts, we often have guests!

In the USA, of course, the aesthetic expectations for lawn care are quite rigid. There must be a uniform coverage by one specie of grass, cut short and tended regularly. Any flowers or plants other than that specie of grass must be confined to carefully bordered beds or containers. If there is dandelion, or clover, or crabgrass, or anything else in the lawn, it must be pulled up by the roots or bombarded with chemicals to destroy it. I was indoctrinated as a young man into this way of seeing outdoor living space, and it’s hard to escape those expectations.

But those expectations have nearly eradicated many pollinators and bird populations.

We have a three-tiered veg garden dug into one of the steep hills on our property. I’m allowing the spaces around the veg beds and fruit trees to go nuts.

Our guests at the BBQ were unconcerned that the grass was a bit overgrown and that there were wildflowers and dandelions everywhere. In fact, they marveled at the variety of butterflies and bees. They insisted that I should re-wild large parts of the lawn section of our garden. “Just cut a path around several islands of rewilded earth,” one suggested. Another said “We stopped mowing our lawn at our previous house in France and were amazed at what came up–it was quite lovely without any tending at all.”

So when I finally got around to mowing yesterday, I swerved around large clumps of wildflowers. I cut a few flat sections where we keep tables and chairs for guests, and left a patch of lawn appropriate for lounging on blankets or for a game of soccer/volleyball/what have you. I cut a meandering path around several large islands which I left natural. We will see what comes up.

The bees and butterflies were very happy with the decision. And, after having reduced 2.5 hours of mowing to about 35 minutes–so was I!

These steep hillsides on our property are very difficult to cut–but with all the wildflowers perhaps I should let them go feral?

An Adorabe Infestation

We figured along with all the upsides of living in France and running a tourist rental biz that there would inevitably be problems. Our apartments are functional and comfy but they are not fancy, and we expect that at some point there will be plumbing and electrical problems, or leaky roofs, etc.

But our first major problem has been a spring insect infestation. Of course in a rural area one expects lots of bugs, and we’ve had in our apartment: flies, bees, beetles, spiders, and ants. But until this spring there hasn’t been a problem with bugs in the rentals. Since April, one of our rental apartments has been over-run with lady bugs (lady birds to our friends from the UK).

We’ve had several guests who stayed in the gite with the lady bugs running rampant–all of them have been super polite and understanding. I’ve been warning incoming guests that sometimes lady bugs enter the apartment and no one has backed out. One fisherman said they only bothered him when they landed on his tablet screen or his shoulders.

In early April there were HUNDREDS of lady bugs on the ceiling. It happened in our apartment as well. I really don’t mind–I sweep them up into a dustpan and release them outside whenever I see them. But my wife is the only human being in history who is terrified of ladybugs. She can’t abide them, and refuses to touch them, and tries to capture them with long-handled spoons, which is hilarious to watch. Whenever she sees one she becomes ferociously angry, despite having lived in the tropics for four years where insects all up in your grill is simply a fact of life.

So far our guests have been understanding. I told them I am reluctant to use chemicals or to call a professional because we are trying to be eco, and all our clients have been in accord with this, and one woman actually swept them herself and put them in our garden. “J’aime beaucoup les coccinelles!” she said.

I’ve tried several online folk remedies, but nothing works (vinegar, BTW, is always a remedy for everything–it does not, however, cover the pheromone trail which attracts lady bugs back inside). Now that the weather is warmer at night they seem to have stopped coming in–I hope that remains the case, because eventually someone is going to object to lady bugs all over the place on their vacation.

I suppose if one must endure an infestation in France, that having it be swarms of lady bugs is perhaps the best option. After all, at every local market there is some craftsperson selling ceramic lady bugs, hand-painted lady bug tiles, or embroidered lady bug pillows, or lady-bug t-shirts. They are black, red, orange, yellow, they eat aphids, and they are adorable!