Gardening

We had a few cold nights in the last week so I had to put all my plants in the shed overnight. I'm really pleased with the progress of my butternut squash and lots of melons although I only have one honeydew and I'm not sure how successful that one is going to be. Plenty of cantaloupe and charentais and water melons though. Only one courgette plant so far, but a maybe that's good enough. Toby is growing tomatoes from slices of tomatoes on the landing windowsill. We're going to plant them out along the wall of the outbuilding with the south facing wall beside the swimming pool. It's all rather exciting but we do need to fence the chickens in before the tomatoes ripen, otherwise they eat them all. I have planted some pepper seeds indoors, really nice small red and orange peppers but they are not sprouting yet. I hope they will - I guess we should wait till after the Saint Glaces which I think is 15th May before planing anything out, but I think I might risk it and put the melons in the ground before I go to England on 10th.

I just read Still Alice, a brilliant book by Lisa Genova about a woman who gets early onset Alzheimer's disease which was terrifying and really sad. I think I'm pretty philosophical about death in general, but what is scary about Alzheimer's is the way it changes your character and you just can't make your brain work. I would rather die younger than stay alive not recognising all my loved ones and just being a pain to them. Thinking about my father, I wonder if he would have found it easier if he had known about Alzheimer's and could have recognised the symptoms he had as being a part of the disease. I think he still knew who we all were more or less when he died, although I remember Tana being very put out by the fact that he thought she was his mother sometimes! Casey said that his mother didn't know who any of them were, some time before she died. That's really sad. I think Julian doesn't recognise his children any more either. Makes it so hard to still love them. I really went off my father quite a lot towards the end of his life, and he still knew who I was, but he just became more bigoted than ever. It is such an effort to try and understand. I'm also reading Submission, a book that Alex sent me about the Muslims taking over French politics in 2022. I'm going to try and finish it today as today is the first round of the French elections and I have got to supervise the voting this evening - part of my role as conseilleur elu! I really hope Marine Le Pen doesn't get in as this could make our lives much more complicated after Brexit. It doesn't look likely but who knows? After the Brexit vote and then Trump anything is possible and these mad votes have taught us to expect the unexpected.

We went to a brilliant party at Gill and David's on Easter Sunday. Really fun and some lovely people there