Getting more than we bargained for.....

Our lovely neighbours arrived promptly for lunch armed with dessert, a dessert wine (made by a friend of theirs in Bordeaux from Monsieur’s days in the regiment with the man), a bouquet of freshly picked flowers and a lettuce from their garden!

We showed them around our garden (they were fascinated to see what Tony had done and all with his “nearly new chinese tractor”!) and then sat down for lunch starting with pea and mint soup which went down well after which we were introduced to ‘Le Chabrol’.  Le Chabrol is essentially a south west tradition - you take a generous glug of any red wine that happens to be open and pour it in to your recently finished soup bowl - you swirl it around the bowl to get all the good bits of soup that your spoon didn’t manage to lift off the crockery and then you drink it - cheers!

After soup finished with ‘chabrol’ - we moved on to Julia’s chicken fricassee served with potatoes - followed by salad (we skipped the cheese course today - not sure if that was wise or not but they seemed ok with it despite the cheese normally being served with the salad after the main course.........may try cheese next time and see if we can gauge any additional enjoyment!!), followed by Madame’s dessert (a platter of assorted pastries) and the dessert wine.  The meal drew to a close about 2 1/2 hours later with coffee at which point, having asked where the best place to buy plants was, they offered to take us to the best place as they were looking to pick up another hundred leeks anyway.....!

Although exhausted, we didn’t want to miss out on the opportunity to see where the local folk shop for their plants each year so happily went along and we’re both so pleased we did.  This is certainly not somewhere we would have happened upon and it’s certainly “a find” and somewhere we’ll be revisiting - in addition to showing us this place, they brought us back to their place via some other neighbours who they invited to join us at theirs for ‘un apero’ on the proviso that they uproot a dozen tomato plants to give to us after a unanimous decision that these particular neighbours happen to have the best tomatoes in the area and as such our garden wouldn’t be complete without some of them!

So almost 6 hours later - we’re back home - heads swirling with new found french words - and 100 leek plants, 12 tomato plants, 12 broccoli plants, 12 brussel sprout plants, 10 cabbage plants and a cumcumber plant to get in the ground - it certainly looks like we have our work cut out for us tomorrow!