It’s been a difficult couple of weeks. I have good news & bad.

Good stuff... blossom is out! these were taken in our garden… isn’t it beautiful?

We were in France for a few weeks over Easter. I have a pretty tiny studio over there but it’s lovely – with a super view of our wildflower paddock at the rear of our house & this beautiful fabric on the wall & curtain by Zardi & Zardi which I absolutely love.

I got lots of work done. Here are a few of my sketches.

We’d not been there at Easter before. Loches puts on a great series of events over the Easter weekend with a fair, live music & tented bars in the centre which was great for the community. I stupidly didn’t take photos of it – apologies! Below is the superb Hotel de Ville where it took place so please use your imagination 🙂

The weather was glorious & sunny with 24 degrees whereas in England it was chilly & pouring with rain the whole time. We walked Bruno in & around Loches & drove to Saumur one weekend which is beautiful – I’d recommend dropping by….

Upon our return I had lots of meetings & got some fabulous new work in which I’ll tell you about another time. I saw Jane, my client I’ve worked with for many years & took this photo below right. The photo on the left is how it was when I first met her. It’s now a beautiful garden she opens to the public…See Orchard House here in my portfolio

The Bad – After a whirlwind of a week I was pretty exhausted. On Friday morning I was driving to Henley on Thames to meet my contractor Tom & received a text from a French friend telling me they noticed when passing, our kitchen windows & shutters were open yet they knew we were not there. OMG! After frantically trying to get hold of our neighbour & key holder between meetings, we finally received an email that evening telling us we had been burgled.

We immediately booked a crossing, cancelled all meetings & social gatherings for the following week & drove 600 miles on Saturday to see what state our lovely French house was in. Not great it transpired. Thieves had jemmied their way in & ransacked the place. Thankfully they had taken little & left without vandalising it. Police were brilliant & told us there had been a spate of burglaries over 4 months & in some cases bleach had been poured all over peoples precious things. Thankfully we were spared that fate. Alarms & new cameras were installed, damage repaired, we returned last weekend feeling sad but relieved it had not been worse.

Good & bad – If you follow me on social media you will be aware we have fish in our pool at home. They were my husband’s idea as he loves to see them pottering about (so do I if I’m honest but they do mean it’s harder to keep it clean…). When we returned after the Easter trip all 11 very large fish appeared to have been taken by the heron. This video was taken when we had all 11. I stupidly had not added the usual tripwires around it as I normally do when we are away for any length of time so a heron or two had clearly been & helped themselves. We still had little tiny ones – their offspring but all the big impressive ones had disappeared :(.

All for now. I need to make up for the last week!