It seems like a strange thing when it is still summer to be thinking about winter, but it's part and parcel of life in rural France that you have to think ahead. This year, we began our winter planning in July.

Most of us here, for instance, heat our houses with woodburning stoves, so there is no 'turning the heat up' when you need it and just expecting the mains supply to be there. You have to make sure you have stock in, and wood ordered in summer comes at a lower price than winter wood, for obvious reasons. It's also better delivered in summer so that you can get it under cover and make sure it dries out good and proper before winter arrives. 

This year, we haven't had a summer wood delivery because we're waiting for a friend to come and cut up the remainder of last year's overstock, which was too long to fit in the stove. Our chainsaw is broken, so this is labour we'll have to hire for this year. 

Instead, I ordered densified wood, which at 257 euros a half-tonne and 335 euros a tonne, works out a lot cheaper if you buy it in bulk. That arrived on Monday, just as the heavens opened (in the driest summer since 1914...), and the DH and I had to barrow it into the barn in the pouring-down rain. Just as we finished, so did the rain, of course.

We also ordered the oil for our central heating back in June. Those of you who don't heat with oil will not have noticed the price drop, as it hasn't translated into petrol prices at the pump, but the lower price for heating fuel is a massive bonus this year - around half the price it was two years ago. So now we have a nice full tank, which always makes me feel happy - it was so empty it was nearly running on vapour. 

Meanwhile, on Monday, the 'window guy' came to measure up the windows properly and get his deposit. Three medium-size windows (replacing leaky single-glazing) are setting us back nearly 3,000 euros. Argon-filled, with a stove-enamelled finish, they are the world's whizziest windows, and for the price, they'd better be. But we trust the installer, whom we've used before, and the windows will be started on 20 September, just before the weather gets really cold. 

On Friday it's the turn of the bedroom, which is being insulated with 20cm-thick polystyrene-backed plasterboard. Hopefully it will make a big difference, as below our beams, which are dado-rail height, we are only protected from the outside world by a centimetre-thick layer of plasterboard. 

Things should be better this year, though our cathedral ceiling means the room will never be warm. But I don't ask much, really. Just that I don't have to sleep in a hat all this winter, as I did last year...

In addition to planting Guy's medlar tree yesterday, we managed to get the roses in.

It's two years since I planted roses, and I've missed it. It was just too expensive last year, what with the recession and all. This year I opted for mainly yellowy-buff colour roses: Gloire de Dijon, Goldfinch, Desprez a fleur jaune and Alberic Barbier - the last one supplied free by David Austin, as they supplied Auguste Gervais in error for this rose a few years ago. 

All of these roses are notable for their scent, and they're all strong growers, going to at least 15 feet as climbers, and perhaps up to twice that, but they're all been planted as shrubs, mixed in with coloured-leaved elders and cornus wands, purple berberis and philadelphus, so it remains to be seen how big they'll get. This latest planting means there are now 44 varieties of roses in the garden, most of them species and ramblers.

Guy's tree, meanwhile, is tree number 5 in the new 'orchard' that we're planting out the back of the house. Two trees - an oak and a walnut - self-seeded here, and this year we've added an apple and a greengage. By the year's end, I hope there will be nine trees, mostly small, and mostly floral so that we can look down on them from our bedroom window, which is three stories up. 

Medlars, in case you're not familiar with them, are an old orchard fruit not much grown nowadays. One reason they fell from popularity is that you can't eat them till they're rotten - you have to leave them to 'blet', like persimmons. When the skin goes translucent and the flesh goes pulpy, they're ready, and it's best to dig the flesh out with a spoon, and eat it with cream. 

I've wanted a medlar tree since I was a little girl when I used to play in my uncle's orchard, and it's a fine ornamental tree too, with a shrubby, olde-worlde shape, beautiful flowers and leaves that turn yellow in autumn. The fruit itself resembles a large green rosehip, and goes under the more colloquial name of 'open arseholes' - an accurate description, it has to be admitted...

It was a close-run thing between the medlar and a nashi pear, which is another fruit I've always wanted in the garden. More commonly known as an Asian Pear, a nashi is round like an apple but tastes like a pear, and the specimen I saw also had attractive bronzed foliage and masses of white blossom, so would make a good garden tree. Ah well, maybe next month... 

When I wrote my new book, Make Do & Cook, (you can buy it here for £9.99 plus postage), one of the things I wanted to focus on was stretching meat.

Meat is greatly beloved of the average Brit - only something like 2 per cent of the population is fully vegetarian - but Brits also tend to eat way too much of it.

Meat in moderation is a good thing in the diet - it gives you essential fatty acids, iron and a boatload of vitamins, but it's also the major source of saturated fat in the diet (around 45 per cent of ALL fat in our diet comes from meat) and an excess of this is a leading cause of heart attack and stroke. 

Meat is also expensive when compared with similar sources of protein such as pulses (you can easily feed a family of six on a 99p pack of chickpeas, for instance), and it has a serious impact on the planet, with much good agricultural land put to beef production that could be better used for cereal production.

If you don't want to give up meat altogether but would like to reduce it, there are easy ways to cut it down fairly painlessly.

* When making something like a stir-fry, risotto or pasta, dice the meat and cook it separately, then scatter the dice over the top of the dish. This fools the eye (and the average carnivore) into thinking they're getting more meat than they actually are. The separate meat is usually best fried with garlic, onions and some herbs or spices for flavouring - don't just cook it on its own. 

* In stews and slow-cooked dishes such as chilli or boeuf bourginon, substitute a percentage of the meat with chickpeas or kidney beans (tinned, if you're not up to the routine of soaking and boiling them). Start out gradually by substituting a quarter, then a third, then half. Chickpeas and kidney beans have a satisfying 'meaty' texture and will soak up the flavour of the meat. NB: if you're not used to eating pulses, it is very important to go gradually or you'll get terrible flatulence. This is something that disappears as your digestive system begins to produce the necessary enzymes to break down the pulses, but it puts many people off pulses at first if they're not used to it.

* Use a small quantity of very flavoursome meat such as smoked chicken or bacon bits rather than larger amounts of blander meats to flavour a dish - one classic recipe I've included in my book is poulet fumé aux lentilles, where the basic dish of lentils, carrots and onions is flavoured by smoked chicken. 

* Use large quantities of herbs, spices, onions and garlic to build flavour in dishes rather than relying on meat. For instance, a pasta sauce tastes just as good when made from lots of onions, garlic, tomatoes, a dash of cayenne and a teaspoon of muscovado sugar as it does when it includes beef. 

* Eat from smaller plates, place the meat in the centre and pile up the vegetables and starch components of a meal around it. Brits were traditionally taught to think in thirds: one third meat, one third veg, one third starch, but meat should really be no more than a quarter of the dish and if you arrange your food in the traditional way, the lack is noticeable. 

* Eat vegetarian one day a week and build up to two days if you can. We usually have a veggie meal on a Wednesday, with two other days being set aside for fish, and I might try to sneak another veggie meal past the DH later in the week too. But Sunday is often a blow-out roast to make up for it.

Make Do & Cook by Patricia Mansfield-Devine is available now as a paperback for £9.99.

Or choose one of the e-book editions, available for all popular platforms including the Kindle, Sony Reader and (soon) the Apple iPad, with prices starting at $9.99.

» Find out more at WebVivant Press »

I found another article here on decluttering.

These are always worth a read, especially at this time of year when you suddenly get the urge to throw everything out. 

I'm not sure that it really has anything dramatically new to say, butit has some advice that is worth repeating, such as: "You don't have to be ruthless, but you do need to be dispassionate. Don't feel guilty about getting rid of something just because somebody gave it to you, or you spent a lot of money on it."

Harder said than done when you're a tightwad, of course. And the DH just a couple of weeks ago found a use for some things I sold two years ago - oops. 

More important perhaps is the link to Terence Conran's page on decluttering (I like the pictures here - it's how I fondly imagine I would live if I actually had some organisation and no cats). Although, again, the advice is familiar, one phrase did strike me:

"Anything that you are keeping on the off chance that it might either come in useful or become valuable one day. What is more useful and more valuable is the space that it is occupying"

Aha. Space is indeed useful and valuable, especially in Britain, where people live in the smallest houses in Europe, on the smallest plots of land. For instance, few people can really afford luxuries like a spare bedroom any more - far better to put a clic-clack in the dining room and turn the spare room into an ensuite - at least that way you get to actually use it. 

Maybe what we all need is gigantic lockups to put all our junk in, then when we're dead, all our rellies can come round and exclaim at the crap - or, as I did last night - cry out in wonder at the rackds of vintage clothing batty-as-a-fruitcake Cornelia Bailey had managed to amass in her Jacobean pile in Country House Rescue. I would have given my eye teeth to trawl through those two rooms, I tell you what...

I found some tips online the other day about selling your property in the current market. 

The piece was written for sellers abroad - particularly Spain - but there's some good general advice for anyone who's trying to move house but can't shift their property at present. 

Space
Few matters are more important to buyers than a ‘feeling’ of space, says the author. This is as important to someone seeking a studio flat as a person wanting a luxury villa.

He advises that you look at photographs in interiors magazines and notice that what they all have in common is a lack of clutter. Surfaces are generally clear and furniture is minimal.

To duplicate this look, remove everything that in any way reduces the ‘sensation’ of space, he says, including possessions that are dear to you. "Few people will ever buy your property because of your belongings," he points out, so be ruthless - put your stuff in storage if you have to.

Light

"Make sure your property is filled with as much natural light as possible. A lack of plentiful natural light strikes deeply into the subconscious, always producing a negative sensation.

"Get rid of any heavy velvet or net curtains, however inconvenient this may be in the short term. Make sure that windows are clean, heavy curtains are pulled well back and that any nearby vegetation or trees do not darken your house."

In this house, because of our 2ft thick walls and tiny windows, we use extra-long curtain poles, cream curtains, and tie them well back from the windows. As we are not overlooked, we also only use curtains for warmth, only winter and only in the living room, and even here, in summer, they come down altogether. In London, where we lived almost on the street, we used stick-on film on the windows to blank out vision in the lower half, and cream Roman blinds - no clutter, and infinitely variable light.

Deliver the dream

"A few well placed bottles of champagne, a full wine rack and some yachting/golfing magazines can provide a high life ‘feel’ to a room," says the author. "Fresh fruit and flowers always add colour and the smell of freshly ground coffee can be effective."

The magazine and wine idea is a good one - its something we use when we're 'staging' interiors for photography but I wouldn't have thought of it for selling a house.

Cleanliness

"Few things are more off-putting than properties that are unclean, messy, greasy or smell of cigarette smoke, damp or pungent incense sticks," the author advises. "Keep your house well aired and centralise all extraneous mess in one discreet area preferably away from the main body of the accommodation."

Oh Lord, why don't more people do this? It is so basic, and yet I think people can't see their own filth when they're living in it. Smokers are particularly guilty, as they simply can't smell their own smoke, nor realise what a brown, hideous tinge everything they own has about it. I vividly remember moving into a flat in Kilburn and the brown water that ran down the walls as I washed the previous owner's nicotine off everything.

Low maintenance

"Prune trees and shrubs, clear your garden of weeds and undergrowth, power wash terraced areas and paths and make sure that your garden looks easy to maintain. Also mend broken gates, fix dripping taps and ‘sticking’ doors or windows.

"Repaint scuffed areas of paintwork to provide an impression of care – if a buyer sees small areas of neglect he will suspect that your house has more profound problems."

These tips should be tattooed on the eyelids of everyone who's trying to sell in France at the moment - most of their properties look awful, and a potential buyer couldn't help but be put off the second they turn into the courtyard. Some have broken-down old cars in the driveway, most have moss and weeds everywhere, and few Brits seem to spruce up their paintwork and plant geraniums in windowboxes, the way the French do. 

Warm

"If you have a viewing, make sure that your property is warm."

Well doh, you would think. But people are stupid...

Lived in

"Few properties are more difficult to sell than unlived in, empty shells. ‘Dress’ your property so that it feels like a permanent home and not somewhere that is temporary or deserted. Always retain furniture in your property together with pictures, curtains, towels and the minimum obvious objects to give the impression that someone is living there all the time."

This is obviously written for holiday home owners, so its relevance to UK sellers would be minimal, but lived-in vs tidy is a hard balance to strike.  Too many Brits regard their property as a house and not a home, and paint and furnish it to suit the next buyer, stripping it of all individuality.

Property surroundings

"The impression of a buyer is not restricted to just within the boundaries of your property. Rubbish piling up close by, a badly potholed road, excessive weeds on pavements and discarded junk all provide a negative impression.

"It may hurt to clean up the mess of others (or do the work of the town hall!) but it is essential to ensure that the immediate environment of your home looks good and not neglected. So, get out there and fill in the worst of the potholes and regularly get rid of any junk and rubbish!"

Easy enough to do here - my local commune would be delighted if we slung a couple of buckets of gravel into the pothole that regularly opens up in our driveway (there's a source underneath), but harder to do in the UK, I would have thought.

Individuality

"If your property is identical to many others close by, try to give it some aesthetic individuality such as painting it a different colour, having window boxes of colourful flowers, adding wooden shutters or perhaps some pretty water feature in the garden beside an imaginative shaded seating area. Make sure your property stands out and has the capacity to leave a positive and distinctive memory."

Our Dutch friend Gerry was always a big fan of 'My pink half of the drainnpipe' but until he came to Britain he didn't know it was a REAL phenomenon. In London, our half of the drainpipe was black, if memory serves. It can be hard, though, to make a mid-terraced house look individual when it's surrounded by others exactly like it. 

Be relaxed

"Always give the impression to any potential buyers that you are perfectly relaxed and content. Never appear nervous, never over-sell and never mention anything derogatory about your home."

Well LOL. The last time I sat in someone's house to ask about selling her property, she gave me a massive list of everything that was wrong with it. Admittedly, I wasn't buying, and she may have been unguarded, but her near-hatred of her own home certainly came over in the conversation.

"Have a plausible reason for wanting to sell and make sure that reason has nothing to do with anything that could be considered a negative about your property (‘we would like an en-suite’, ‘need a bigger garage’, ‘the garden takes too much effort’, ‘we hardly use the the pool’ etc)."

I know only two people who've cracked this - one who sold because her husband died and another who sold because she had become too disabled to continue living in the property. Both are reasons that any buyer would understand and sympathise with. If we ever sell this place, we'll probably just say we're moving closer to family.

For more tips, visit the link above.