Autumn feasts

Autumn has arrived here in Penne d'Agenais.  We are still enjoying warm days and sunshine but the mornings are definitely chilly. 
Still it has brought us many good things.
Mushrooms from around our grounds. These lovely olives and more to come. 

We have harvested the squashes and are enjoying our chard, spinach and  winter salads including a french winter vegetable called Mache (seeds kindly gifted by our lovely French neighbour). 

Tomatoes have just stopped producing out on the veg patch we used the last to make some chutney and sauce.

We have started to get the veg patch ready for next year:-

Onions and Garlic planted. Strawberry beds planted up with runners gifted by our kind neighbour.

Black current plants collected from England on our recent visit and 3 fruit trees from the local wholesaler all waiting for the ground to be soft enough to dig them in.

Now and after a trip with our neighbours to a nearby Bio (organic) orchard we have apples too  (our own little trees did not yeald more than one or two this year).

The pool is now winterised.  big winter cover on to stop it getting too murky over the winter and the leaves we are collecting are going nicely on our compost heaps. 

The grass is still growing so we have more cuts to do before the end of the year. 

Yesterday was Toussaints day (all saints)  and here the tradition is for family visits to loved ones of the past.  many of the Cemeteries are full of flowers and plants, both fresh and silk for the last week you could not move in the market or supermarkets for chrysanthemum plants and silk flowers of all bright colours.  

It has turned our minds to Christmas and having tested the wood burning stoves in the Gites, we have now posted our Christmas charges for people staying in the Gites. 

We have a full chambre d'hote for Christmas. 
Mincemeat has been made (lovely bio apples).

Freezer cookies prepared and in the freezer ready for our visitors. 
We just have the Christmas markets to check out!