Brighter this week. Last week was a rainy, squally week that got better as it went on, but started over the weekend with foul rain showers – hard and heavy. This week seems to be picking up, though it still feels cool to me for May. No frosts, no cold nights, just low 20°Cs.
I’m back to full time work this week – and things pick up the closer we get to exams as everyone tries to cram in a little extra revision. Thursday is a bank holiday and I have absolutely promised myself a rummage at a vide grenier – there is a huge one on at St Mary, a village just near me. I missed the big one in the forest yesterday, but I had a ton of errands to do and household stuff. If you don’t know France, or even if you do, you have probably very little concept of the vide grenier – this car boot sale with a kick. You load up all the stuff you have been hoarding from the 60s-90s, you put it in your car, you drive to some field somewhere, you display your wares, you charge more for your treasures than they are worth, people come round and gawk at your stuff, you pack up, you go home. That’s the essence of it.
I’ve bypassed the stuff that is on sale, because it is a bit unbelievable. I try to get photos and fall short because I feel it might be offensive to take photos, so I try to do it on the sly. After all, you don’t want to have to feign interest in some old toilet seat or chamber pot or Nana Mouskouri albums when really you just want to have a right old laugh and advise people – in the name of all things holy – to take their junk to the junk yard instead of spending their Sundays and bank holidays trying to offload it.
Today is the day for a little pruning. My usually neat forsythia has shot up. My vegetable garden – well – it’s a field at the moment – a field of thigh-high grass. Rain and rain and heat and rain have taken over. Luckily, it is sunny and it is dry. Long may that continue.
My philadelphus and viburnum are in lovely bloom – everything is huge, fat white blossom at the moment.
I surely cannot be the only one to love the big, fluffy pompoms of the viburnum?
Anyway, time for action. Have a lovely Monday and enjoy the sun if you have some.
Lady Justine's Blog 
Spot on!! Love your description of the vide grenier… Enjoy the sun and don’t work too hard. C
LOL – the vide grenier! I find the local brocantes in Brittany not much better, to be honest… interestingly, the word has been Germanised here and the “Brockenhaus” is always a fascinating place to go (and one we have donated MUCH to while decluttering LOL!!). Actually, we have several and some are run by charities like the Blue Cross or the Sally Annes.
Love your viburnums and philadelphus – I only have a “natural” viburnum that blooms a bit like an elder, but I’d love one with proper snowball pompoms. I’ve just been eyeing up phildelphi, possibly to replace my forsythia, of which half has suddenly given up signs of life, no idea why, it did fine after a major prune last spring and summer… old age (25)?!
And we’ve just had rain and bise, brrr, for what seems like weeks, so this weekend, when it warms up with some sun and 20+°C, we’re off to England for a birthday – where it will, apparently, rain all weekend. Sigh.
I love viburnums in all their types – could easily have a garden just of various viburnum! The weather here is not looking much more promising, sadly.
Apart from Emmaus and the Red Cross, charity shops seem thin and far between. There are vide greniers for various charities and purposes (parents’ associations seem to be usual ones!) but not so much trash for charity. Emmaus is just such a place like nobody could ever imagine!