A professional photographer is coming to take pictures of the garden in a couple of days’ time for one of the online booking sites I use for the gîte, Lou Messugo. But it’s a disaster. It’s been raining almost non-stop for over a week so the grass is 30cm high but too wet to mow. JF has decided to dig up part of the lawn and resow, covering it with a large blue tarpaulin to keep the birds off and apart from the regular lot of rampant weeds there’s an enormous thistle growing by the side of the pool. When I say enormous, I mean gigantic ENORMOUS. The pool is still in its winter state, the sun loungers are covered in dust and mostly stacked away in the garage and the parasols are undoubtedly mouldy. How am I going to get the garden in order let alone looking good, enticing, summery, appealing in two days and start my blog?
I’ve been wittering on about wanting to blog for sometime now, and today my lovely webmistress told me she was ready to go live with the new upgraded website and did I have my first blog ready? Did I just! So many ideas…so many notes…so much research…so much talk, but actual pen to paper so to speak? Of course not.
So what did I do? Start writing? Of course not! More research was required – how does one actually start a blog, as in what should I say? I have plenty of other future subjects, but the first one wasn’t there. Time to trawl back through some of my favourite blogs to their first utterings to get ideas/inspiration….yes, procrastination is my middle name.
Let me introduce myself: I’m Phoebe and I run a gîte – a self-catering apartment – in the south of France. I want to blog about it and my life in general. I’ve lived in 9 different countries and travelled in over 50. I’m married to JF, a Frenchman I met in Vietnam and we have 2 boys. I’m half British, half Australian, don’t have a home town and don’t “come from” anywhere in particular (more on this in a later blog). I’m going to blog in English with the odd French post and probably a fair bit of Franglais. I’m not setting any targets, I’ll just see how it goes, but right now I need to go and tackle that thistle….
So I assume you did get the garden sorted. I have never managed to sort out getting an Airbnb photographer in as when our gite all looks lovely we have guests in and when we don’t have guests in the weather may not be good. Ho hum. As for thistles – I wrote a post about them once too. I love them for their beauty close up (the flowers) and how good they are for wildlife but hate them popping up in the play area or veg garden. Thank you so much for joining in with #MyFirstBlogPost and what a way we have all come since we starting penning our thoughts on the Internet!
It is so much fun finding out where all these lovely bloggers started 🙂 Just discovered your blog through #MyFirstBlogPost and I look forward to reading more!
I can’t picture you being a nervous publisher Clare, but good to hear I’m not alone in procrastinating!
Those thistles come and go but I’ve never seen one quite so big again!
I knew you’d like it Swags!
Thanks for your sweet words Cathy (though maybe you just mean I’m a loud mouth who can’t shut up?!!)
I can’t imagine why I thought I’d write the occasional post in French, it takes long enough to produce a post in English, it’d take for ever to write in French and my readers read English! But then back then I guess I didn’t know if I’d have any readers!
And where are those blogs in French of which you speak? Not that I would be able to read them 🙂 It is nice to be able to read back to where it all started and see how far you have come! #MyFirstBlogPost
One thistle – both literal and metaphorical – long gone
I can’t quite imagine you having trouble starting a blog. So much fun to be taking this little time travel trip for #myfirstblogpost
Isn’t it hilarious to read this again? And now you host the ultra-fabulous French linkup?! We’ve all come a long way, huh? Thanks, Phoebe, for tweeting the MyFirstBlogPost link-up to me, it’s awesome!
I hope that you managed to get rid of your thistle! I have seen your blog before so I look forward to exploring it 🙂 #myfirstblogpost
I loved reading this, Phoebe. I can completely relate to the procrastination of that first post. I felt I needed to do months of research, scribbling in notebooks and head scratching before I even dared push that publish button. Even now, 9 months later, I’m a very cautious blogger, too nervous to just write and post, which so many other bloggers seem to do so well. #MyFirstPost
Thanks for your support Steph, I’m slowly getting into this blogging lark! Have you read any of my more recent posts?
Thank you! It was tough to get out but it’s gone!
I hope the weather improved, and that you got rid of that thistle. Good luck with more blogging.
Thanks Mags! 🙂
Well done starting your blog! I look forward to reading more. 😀
Looking forward to reading your blog. Like you, we’re about to spruce up the gite for the beginning of the season. We’ve had a peek into the pool – not too horrendous, but vast quantities of dead leaves and drowned worms to deal with. :p
Thanks for supporting our blog hop on Monday. We’ll be doing another one soon so I do hope you’ll join in.