Hedge problem

We have two hedges at the top pf our garden that separates  us from our two neighbours. 

This one which is thriving with Lilac, Elderflower, Forsythia bushes et cetera and trees

And this one that I hate and is turning brown and dying all of a sudden, hence the gap in the hedge.

I will like to cut the whole thing down, but our privacy would be comprised, this neighbour has hens and the fence behind the hedge is about a metre high. This is a problem too, especially as we are getting some hens from a friend soon...just need to finish the hen coop...

A solution needs to be found soon, perhaps planting a couple of new bushes each year and cutting back the Thuyas as we go. This hedge is quite long though so it could take ages.

Bye Bye Old Friend

Yesterday I said goodbye to an old friend, one I will never see again, but it's for the best, my car has served me well, bought it in 2001 aged one year old and now aged twelve it was time to part.  
Since moving here, my children haven't required my services at a taxi driver (primary school a stones throw away and school buses for older children) and Alain rides his bicycle to local train station and catches a high-speed bus...yes bus, not train, to work.  If he goes away, which is usually often, apart from at the moment, his company pay for taxis for airport runs et cetera.  
We were keeping my little car for either Oliver or Charlotte, the first to pass their driving test, however, it seems the chance of Oliver passing his test in the next six months is highly unlikely and in the meantime the 206 hasn't been feeling so well.  The speed counter broke a couple of months ago, there has been a oil leak (tiny) for ages and the final straw came last week, when I noticed the exhaust pipe nearly touching the floor!  The exhaust was fine, good condition in fact, it's just that the brackets holding in place had snapped.  I managed to get under the car and fix it to the frame with a heavy duty elastic cord with hooks on the end, our old neighbour Robert, would have thought this a crazy idea, but it worked.
The car has gone to "troc" (they sell and we split the sale price, not sure if it's 50/50).  My car needs fixing first but then should sell quickly.  I just hope it goes to a good home, and if we can get a couple of hundred euros back, now that would be wonderful.

Now we are a one car household. We are looking into the idea of either buying an electric bicycle or small scooter/ motorbike but there's no rush.  One car less, means a saving of 400 euros per year in insurance, we're happy with that. Finger-crossed it sells fast.

Ugly Wall...still ugly for now

We have a horrible concrete wall that separates our garden from that of our next door neighbours Edith and René.  Paint has been flaking off it, along with bits of wall, exposing the metal rods that hold the whole thing together.
Something had to be done.  Two choices, knock the whole awful thing down or repair it!  We decided to do the latter, mainly because we didn't want to worry E & R who are old (the wall is ours) and it would have been a big upheaval for them as they have many plants growing at the foot of the wall and a few climbing roses attached too, they were probably planted about thirty years ago and well, it's the only bit of garden they use and it's pretty, so guess what? I've been working on repairing it.

 Pretty horrid, yes I know.  All the grey bits are where I've already filled in holes or covered over bare concrete.  To the far left hand side where you can see even more cement and a bit of red, this was originally open and led to our house's stables, where the neighbours live now...in fact the our horrible wall wasn't there once upon a time.

 This bit of wall stuck out like a sore thumb, brick breeze blocks!  So I'm screeding over them and when finished I'll paint it the same colour as the other wall.

Just above the breeze brick wall there's a lovely old brick wall, I love this bit.

Our beginnings in trail running

                                              View of our just over ten kilometer run

We started running jogging a couple of months ago in December as a way to lose a little bit of weight and stay fit.  It was tough at the beginning, running a little and having to walk a lot, but we are progressing slowly. It helps us to be able to monitor our speed and length of each run using the runtastic application on my phone. 

Our average speed per kilometer has gone up from a snail paced 7km per hour to a more acceptable  9.1km.

Our aim is to get to over 10km per hour before May and increase our endurance so maybe we'd be able to do a trail race before the year is up, our only expectation would be, to finish the race and not be last.

Last weekend we ran for over an hour  for the first time and managed to complete just over 10 kilometers in 1hour and 7 minutes. If we can lose those seven minutes, I'd be very happy.  

The circuit we completed starts and ends at our front gate, there's a hill to climb (another harder one later) almost straight away then we're off the road and on a track for about 6km then cross down through a neighboring town and then around 3 km along side the River Seine. This was the worst bit, because there must be about fifteen barriers you have to get round (there to stop motorbikes I suppose) and here's where we lost a lot of momentum.  With the benefit of hindsight we can learn for next time how to become quicker for this part and hopefully run this circuit in 1hour and 5 minutes.... we tried twice to run again this weekend, but with inscriptions pending for Oliver's post bac, prepa's and competitive entrance exams to fill out on Saturday, that pretty much scuppered our plans and on Sunday our neighbors came round just when we though about running again and instead we shared a lovely apple tart that our neighbor Réné had made, and had a nice cup of tea while listening  to Edith stories from the past about our small village, especially during the war and I really enjoyed that. Edith is 76 and has always lived here, different houses, but always in this village.

Glutton for punishment...Bedroom

I felt like being lazy this morning, the younger children are happy, and teenagers are either sleeping at friends or here and I probably won't see either of them till way pass lunch-time.

Alexis asked me half an hour ago, what was I going to do today and before I could answer he said our bedroom was yuck (his words), and I've decided to get started on it. It will probably take all morning to fill in all the holes but at least that's something.

On the walls when we moved in, there was an orangy coloured velvet fabric that covered the entire bedroom which really was awful. Mr H used this room as his office, hence all the holes to be filled, because he had a floor to ceiling shelving system where we have the headboard now.

I'm going to keep the room as empty as possible, just our bed, armoire and bedside tables and a comfy chair under the second window...rocking chair which was there, is now downstairs and the small table too. Nedd to find a place for the chest of drawers that's empty, pictured in our bedroom.

The patches of paint, colour pigeon, was what I really wanted to use here, but I'm worried about the long winters and lack of light, even if this is a big south facing room.

This is one of our two windows. My H had the original ones changed for these modern ones which is a shame. On the other side of our little road you can see our neighbours house. Guess what, after almost six months here, she came and introduced herself on Friday. She's really quite shy (like me) and she has her hands full with her job and children and their house needs lots of work doing too. She told me that she had visited our house, but there was too much work to do and the kitchen just put them completely off.