Well today was a day of two halves.
Bright sunshine and forecast to stay like that all day.
So got the machine out to cut the weeds.
Got one tankful done and two things happened, firstly Wifey discovered the new hen-house was falling apart in that the ramp the hens use to go to bed, was failing.
.Bought last year and only in use since about 10 days ago!
So I had to take it out and fix it, which, as it was so cr@ppily made involved taking it completely apart and then remaking it with proper screws and not the hairpins it had.
But also it started to rain!
so rushed the machine back into the shed, having only done one tankful.
Meanwhile a neighbour popped in and in the course of conversation about out new neighbours we discovered that back in about 2007/8 we broke the law.
Inadvertently. When we realised we would need a hedge as the then neighbours looked like they were not going to be the most positive of people, we decided to plant Leylandii. As we wanted to screen them from us. So we bought 85 saplings and employed a recommended gardener-come-arboriculturist pro, to help us with the planting. He had worked for the French National Forestry people, so he came up, it was p!ssing with rain and he asked us where we wanted them. Not knowing there were any restrictions on where to plant a hedge we suggested 1 metre from the boundary. "OK" he says and off we go.
We thought 1 metre would give us enough room to go down between them and the property line to trim them etc. Obvs at the time they were only about 3 feet high if that.
Now, 14 years later they are massively high and dense. Too high in fact and they prevent us seeing the view.
BUT what we didn't know until today is that in France, between neighbours, you are not allowed to plant a hedge that is closer than 2 metres from the boundary. (This is what today's visitor told us.) so the guy doing the planting had said nothing and just gone along with it all. Idiot.
Which explains why the new neighbour, female, a bit stroppy, "told" Wifey to fetch me when Wifey tried to talk to her about her coming onto our land to trim our trees and they had a fire burning only a few yards away from them (Which is illegal in the whole of the Tarn at any time of year, although maybe only for green grass and hedge trimmings.)
So this is something which will have to be sorted out, although I think it ought to have been obvious to them when they bought the place.
. At least the husband is willing to be reasonable. As am I, especially as I now know we were technically at fault.
But I hate having made a mistake without even realising it. Grrrrr! Grrrrr!
So the hens are now happy and no more grass cutting got done.
