We were lucky the hailstones were not bigger. Last week a village had 130 roofs damaged and one was completely smashed and these are the big French roof tiles, not the little Rosemarys we had in England. Our car suffered lots of minor dents, despite being parked under an Elm tree, which can only be ...

That's bad luck LadyA and I hope the pipe is fixed quickly. We've taken the decision to switch to bottled water for drinking as the water filter blocks very quickly and doesn't get the pesticides out anyway- the difference in taste of my tea is incredible! We had our forecast downpour and the water ...

Yesterday morning the heavy rain band missed us by just 15kms but we had some rain last night which wasn't forecast so caught us by surprise. It's supposed to be 34C here this afternoon so the stuff we left out that got wet should dry. Monday is supposed to be heavy rain but thunderstorms are possib...

Grey water recycling is fine in theory, but in practice the pipes will clog up very quickly so you would need a complex filtration system which would also clog up- maintenance costs therefore outweigh the savings. Rainwater storage is fine and we had a local community centre with it fitted, the tank...

Just been to see some friends and we were saying how England can't cope with problems that we would consider minor- bit of snow or no rain for a while. We keep bottled water here for emergencies and someone here only uses bottled water as the mains stuff isn't fit to drink. We were lucky enough to g...

Sounds like your UK weather is pretty much the same as here, but here it is the normal. All house water is mains metered and it's about the same price as England- expensive! Wells here are unreliable and slow to fill and usually the best delivery will be 1000L a week- we have one next to the house b...

We found that uncomposted chicken poo in large quantities kills the grass as it is too strong when fresh. I use a 'foyer' dustpan and brush, which is basically a dustpan and brush on the end of poles- saves bending. You can get a similar thing for horse poo but obviously it's much bigger. Probably m...

It's been very hot and dry down here as well, a big contrast to the floods and cold of the previous week. 32C today rising to 36C on Saturday with heavy thunderstorms forecast for Sunday. At the moment we are watering the veggie plot from stored rainwater- we have two 1000L tubs fed by the guttering...

They sound like some kind of midge- on hot days here we can get huge clouds of them. I'm certain it has nothing to do with poultry. They must be eating something local and Eucalyptus sap is a possibility?

Sure our Dutch neighbours will find those very funny Marigold. Way things are going here it might be Frexit next, so perhaps the longbow will be replaced by a crossbow?