Un Jardin Magnifique

It’s been a long break since my last post, I've been enjoying an actual summer with sun this year and given that our choice of family holiday was decidedly risky weather-wise, we were extremely lucky!

Our destination was a small chambre d’hôte in Saint Denis sur Sarthon, Normandy. What do you mean you've not heard of it? To be honest I’m glad, I think it’s generally and somewhat inappropriately only used as a stopover for those heading further south or a quick weekend break for Parisians, but as our fellow short staying guests frequently exclaimed as we told them we were staying for 10 days ‘I wish we’d booked our stay here longer,’ this house and location definitely deserve more time.

Recycle and re-buy British

It used to pain me, the way my parents and grandparents labelled us the ‘throw away’ generation.

“It’s not worth replacing, it’ll cost almost as much as buying new,” I would argue. Or “Don’t blame us, were the consumers not the manufacturers.”

But now as a parent myself, a little older and slightly more responsible (!), I now discover myself agreeing with them to a certain degree, but don’t let on.

Now I’m not saying every product built today is inferior to those of yesteryear, that would be ridiculous, although quite why advancements in technology and our so called increased intelligence do not allow the smartphone devices we urgently rely upon today to last longer than a couple of years annoys me, but I guess that’s the point, intelligence has taught us that we need to replace items frequently to maintain positive economical sustainment. Confusing isn’t it?

Whilst I do find myself reluctantly accepting of shorter product lifecycles, I am also instinctively becoming more attracted to older and solidly made items particularly with interior and exterior furniture and now more recently garden tools.