Eight years ago when we celebrated our first our skiing holiday in Provence, the week was crowned by wonderful sunshine. The week included dancing on the terrace in shirt sleeves and sunburnt noses. We squealed with joy and congratulated ourselves for such a great winter vacation spot. Since then, the weather has ranged from heavy rain to blizzards and everything in between.
When we got that sunny skiing holiday week, we had just become the owners of our house at the time. Now in turn, in 2020, less than a year ago, we have acquired another new home in Provence and we have ahead of us the first week of skiing vacation in our new house - and the weather is promised to be super sunny again and no less than 18 degrees! It's better than midsummer weather in Finland :D
Indeed, once, at the end of a week of ski vacation, we have skied from our previous hilltop village of Montauroux, tongue in the middle of the mouth, down in the morning slush on summer tires towards the airport. On that holiday too, just a couple of days before the surprise snow, we had a picnic on the beach and the young people were wading in the beach sand of the Mediterranean in their shorts!
We'll see how the weather holds up now. At least it looks promising. Not to that point, I'll probably never wholeheartedly agree to complain about the weather in the south of France. However, Provence and the Riviera are always charming enough that the weather doesn't spoil your vacation much. After all, it's a gift to be able to spend time here, human being.
The program includes housekeeping, which for the time being works on the principle of avoiding the next disaster. The measures are aimed there, where the next bang is most likely to occur.
Now it's absolutely necessary to clean up the garden waste from the yard before the summer fire danger and the threatened prefecture's fire inspection round, glups. It has taken me an inordinately long time to get these piles to the landfill. Every time I start, something happens that needs to be taken care of first. Now it has to be finished. At the same time, I get the much-needed exercise! An incredible amount of brush, weed, twig, etc. waste comes off the yard. I save the best pieces to burn in the fireplace. It is immensely satisfying!
The man will probably go up to the attic in a couple of days to finish the installation of the air heat pumps. Well, he's not a professional or even a hobbyist in these jobs. Last summer's installation company screwed us up and did an appallingly bad job, which left us with a bone in our hand as a result. You have to do it yourself, if you don't want to risk hiring someone from the outside again to tinker with the equipment.
We willingly left the battle without fighting with the installation company after pointing out the matter several times and their repair attempts failing over and over again - to our surprise, the owner of the company didn't even seem to understand that there was any problem and didn't seem to bother to go to the trouble of finding out how the equipment works! A hopeless case.
Inside, the man started the heat pump work himself already in the summer in the incredible heat. There he was in our scorching attic. When he raised the echoes to the attic, he seemed to imagine that he would just adjust a little and then the equipment would be fine. Well, it didn't work out that way. Things are still going on.
Before prejudices rear their heads, it must be said that this shady company was not even French, but was run by a genuine Brit. Bad thing. Maybe now, however, this holiday, the machinery might be closer to working again. Still on my own. This company became expensive - and the summer naturally became very stressful. (I have since heard that others have also had too many problems with this particular company! They threw me out of various FB groups sharing recommendations of ex-pats as a result of numerous bad experiences. Compared to our case, this realization came too late, but I hope some others will be saved from this by.)
The next money hole and our work site are the 50-year-old shutters, which will soon fall on someone's neck from the second floor, if we don't replace them soon. In the picture you can see the absence of the board removed by the storm. Part of one of the rotten shutters had already fallen down while we were gone. This happened last week in a winter storm with the hatches banging. The hatches had managed to come loose from their fastenings and then fell freely in the shaking of the wind. We "admired" this event from home in Finland via our cameras.
A couple of offers have already been received for renewing the upstairs hatches. The painting will be left to me. The company has judged the painting to be so valuable that I'll actually clean up the paint surfaces myself during the Easter or summer holidays. Although, last Easter, our house located on a high mountainside was covered by a film-like cloud of Haze, i.e. a total pea fog for many days, and the humidity was even in the sky. I don't know how the painting work would go if the weather was the same.
It's like my mother used to say: owning brings sorrows. Life is, anyway. It's good to think carefully about what you can handle in addition to your everyday life. After all, there are other burdens on people that have accumulated here, of course, and some of the renovation troubles are not really the worst. As everyone understands of course, The property in the south of France also gives us reason to be happy. We wouldn't be able to handle this otherwise.
Gotta remember to leave them all - everything - sorrows consciously without worrying every now and then and enjoy the healing rays of the sun, the shimmer of the Mediterranean, draw from the perfect beauty of the olive tree and remember the brevity of life. You shouldn't use it to worry - even if there's a reason :) There's always a reason to be sad, and it sometimes takes its time. I decide to direct my eyes and thoughts to happy things now that it is possible, right here at this moment.
To the hand of the Most High, listen friends, to the hand of the Most High. Then look outside yourself and go!
With love, Katariina <3
The sun always rises again. Here is the February dawn over the Mediterranean, admiring it from the mountains.