A garden party for Simon and Sarah’s birthday. No, it’s not what you’re thinking although plenty of wine and food were consumed at the end of the day.

What a way to celebrate your big day. Have you ever been handed a pair of secateurs and garden gloves and pointed in the direction of the back garden? No? Not everyone’s first choice but for the Mason family, I guess it’s just a garden thing. You’ve heard me mention Sarah (Simon’s Mum) before here in Semp Delights Other garden posts include Outdoor Lantern and more.

So here’s our garden party in pictures. I uncovered a trough and pump, Simon removed the lilac plant and its roots from the well. Meanwhile, Sarah tackles the knotweed and fights the jungle. Eric comes to rescue with tarpaulin in position and piles mountains of the stuff high in the sunshine to dry. We’ll burn it this winter when there is almost nothing left but dust. Anything to stop the damn stuff from spreading.

We welcome your thoughts and solutions to removing knotweed. We have all of the horror stories on file so just supportive updates on your knotweed mission in the comments, please.

First visitors at Le Chassaing. Our activities…

We collected Sarah and Eric from Limoges train station. They are hopefully the first of many visitors to Le Chassaing. They stayed at a gite down the road in La Compas in relative comfort rather than the current building site at Le Chassaing. We treated them to the obligatory french markets with splendid cheese and wine to share. Walks through idyllic villages, local art exhibitions and took in the sights of chateaus along the way. Don’t worry it wasn’t just gardening to celebrate we also visited Le Vallee Gourmande a fab restaurant with an amazing view.

For our day out, we went to Lake Vassiviere. Lot’s of watersports, amazing views, bridges, towers all within this amazingly enormous man-made lake. (Approx 10 Sq km) Really enjoyed a little bit of cloud cover. It was at last cool enough to take a walk and sit outside in a shady area for lunch.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *