A Man's Work

It is Spring in Amboise now - quite mild and the flowers are already in bloom

Here are some of Ron's projects to keep busy physically.  He started by clearing out an overgrown area in the front of our house

Then he found old stones on our property and made a mosaic of a patio

The final patio 

 

He even made red brick steps down to our basement out of more old stones and bricks he found

Next he cleared an area in the back courtyard for a garden and cultivated a small rose garden

Our table is graced regularly with roses from our very own garden

Then he planted an herb garden

Next he chopped down a large tree - see him high up in the branches on top of a wall.  The house behind us is 500-600 years old

Soon he began a major endeavor.  Clearing a large area in the back courtyard for a terrace.

This required him loading and then unloading hundreds of pounds of sand for a level base and then tiles.

At this point he is working on each individual tile to mortar and wire brush clean.

When the weather would not accommodate outside work (temperature too low for mortar), he worked on replacing bathroom floor tiles.

How 10 heures became 39 heures

We made an unplanned trip to Michigan to close on a sale of our Quarton Lane house, which sale fell through.  We decided to move all our furniture out into our condo anyway, since we have been living out of boxes with only a card table and small bed for a year at the condo.  The house will be harder to sell bare.  Oh well, c'est la guerre ou la vie.  We needed also to meet Barb's brother, Howard, and arrange for additional support for Barb's mother, Mollie.  There are services she needs at this point that cannot be provided by her 24/7 caregiver.  It took some time, but all is now arranged.  Thus, we felt very productive in finishing up the condo for the most part and spending a great deal of time with Mollie.  Not much time for socializing with friends this trip.

Our return trip to France was supposed to be about 10 hours total - a direct 7.5 hour flight to Paris.  Alas, it was not to be.  We gave Lola, our little dog, her sedative, so she could sleep in her crate under our seat for 8 hours.  Almost but not quite halfway across the Atlantic, a passenger had a heart attack.  The captain turned the plane around and headed back to St. John, Canada.  He had to dump fuel as we were too heavy for the small runway on the Canadian coast.  After we landed there, in addition to removing the ailing passenger, they then spent time to locate her luggage in the hold, refuel and de-ice once again for the trip back across the Atlantic.  As we finally approached the coast of France, the captain announced that the crew had reached their maximum working time and had to land the plane in Brest, France so a new crew could take over.  We all had to deplane and pass through immigration in Brest (a nice little airport by the way).  Hours later a new crew arrived, and we took off for the third time.

We arrived in Paris 8 hours late.  Lola had been in her crate 14 hours without being able to relieve herself.  We had missed the last train to Amboise from Charles de Gaulle airport.  So we spent the night at the airport and eventually reached Amboise at noon on Friday.  We left Detroit at 9pm Wed.  Below is a photo of the train conductors.  The French uniforms are most stylish with a purple stripe and yellow piping and a nipped waistband.