I am typing this blog, for the very first time, in our new shed. 

When I say 'our', I really mean 'my'. His nibs will get to use it, of course, but I claim first dibs on decorating and furnishing it. It's my girly girly girl cabin. 

What I actually wanted was a caravan that I saw advertised on a local site - just 250 euros. My husband's snobbery and flat refusal have resulted instead in our 2,500 euro 'winter palace' - a shed some 10.5m square, on its own concrete square with verandah.

It is - I must admit - a place of perfect contentment, tucked away down here at the bottom of the orchard, barely visible from the house even in winter, turning its back to the slope of our neighbour farmer's hill. One side is hidden by the laurel hedge we put in as a windbreak, the other by the hedgerow line we planted some years ago. 

Getting it built has been a bloody nightmare, with the builder hurting his back, the ground freezing, the inabiilty to hire plant because of the wheat sowing, the endless rain. It took the efforts of four builders, three farmers, a digger, a concrete mixer, a whacker plate, two tractors and ourselves just to get the base in, and five days after the DH and I assembled the actual structure (which went up easy-peasy, log cabin-style), we lost the bitumen roof in a storm. 

But still, we can forget all that, now that's it's in, and it's lovely. 

There's no floor in yet, nothing on the walls and no furnishings other than a couple of recliners and a drop-leaf table, but nevertheless, it's the place in the garden that has become our daily destination. 

From where I'm sitting, I look across the pond to the small deck, the nameless acer - now leafless - the Wedding Day rose covered with tiny red hips, and on, up the slope of the garden, under the pear tree, through the cherry thicket, and on to the piggery and upper barn, almost invisible through the trees. 

The DH looks across all three ponds, to the willow hedge and the Paul's Himalayan Musk, the Kiftsgate rose and the lower barn. And the bamboo clumps that will one day be groves 30ft high. 

It is very private. There are birds singing all around me, and the comforting smell of the fir from which the building is made. The sun is traversing between the barn and the house, before it sets behind our lower barn. It's remarkably warm inside, considering there is no heating or insulation. 

I am absolutely in love with my shed, which is something I've wanted for years. A few years ago I bought a tent on Ebay and pitched that down here for the course of the summer, and it was brilliant. I came down every morning to do my yoga, opened up the zips and would find my (sadly now deceased) cat Lucy ensconced in one of the deckchairs. But this is even better. 

I now have, of course, all sorts of plans for my shed, which is going to be beach house style. A thin white wash inside, open shelving with a table and hopefully a small cooking hob. Mineral water, biscuits and magazines; a big mirror to reflect the light; curtains for the doors and windows. The flooring will be autoclaved pine planks, which have to be ordered from Rennes, 90km away (but at half the price of local offerings), and my old Heal's daybed will replace this teak recliner, with plenty of fleeces and duvets to cuddle up in. 

We've already bought a rather scary-looking Tilley lamp and if, as we intend, we can replace the doors with glass ones in time, then we'll also install a butane heater to make it cosy. In summer it will be our guest accommodation, and all year round, a shelter from the rain and cold, somewhere to work when the sun is too bright, and just a place to get away and enjoy nature. 

Just the quickest of blogs before I get back to subbing - oh the joy - to say that I am TOTALLY FUCKING FED UP with the endless rain.

Really, I have had enough now. Please stop.

I know it was the dryest spring in Normandy since records began, and that we had unbroken sunshine and high temperatures throughout April, which is unheard-of. But it has now rained every day, I think, for a month.

July must be one of the wettest on record by now - all over French websites there are postings about the été triste and people are sending in pictures of deserted beaches, washed-out picnics and empty Paris parks. Every day starts with darkness and heavy, forbidding skies that make you just want to curl up under the duvet, and yesterday's brief flurry of sunshine - the first in seemingly ages - was only enough to lower your guard, ready for today's near-total cloud cover. It's like a bleeding sauna out there.

There is a saying in Normandy that July has two good weeks and two bad weeks, but it is going to have to get its skates on if we're to get even a few days of good at this rate (and there's no sign of anything but more rain in the forecast). We've been reluctant to go out all month because it just meant getting soaked and we are now all going a bit stir crazy in our isolated country hamlets. 

I told you so, my mate G would doubtlessly say. He worked out back in June that we had already had 90 sunny days in Normandy this year, when we normally only get 120 sunny days annually. 'Summer's over," he gloomily told me a week or two ago, and so far, it looks like he's right. August had better make up for this, it really had, because the nights are already starting to draw in. 

It has made me realise afresh that I have GOT to fettle this house a bit and get some more light in here. Each summer, I give up our south window to a massive jasmine plant, which I only cut back once it's finished flowering. Normally, the heady scent seems fair exchange for lower light levels, but this year, it's been so cold (eight degrees some mornings! - in July!!) that the scent has remained firmly outside, and I've been working in this living room plunged in darkness all day (the pic shows this room on a brilliantly bright day, but note that the lights are still on...). 

There are only four tiny windows and a glass door in this 70sqm room and much of the light is swallowed by the 2ft-thick windows, but I am resolved - a new coat of white white white paint; gloss around the doors and windows; plantlife outside cut hard back below the sills and sides. I'd love white covers on the sofa etc but even the blue we have is decimated by the animals, who never wipe their feet, so blue it will have to be. And ultimately, I still haven't given up on the idea of a white ceramic floor instead of this awful terracotta (everyone who comes in here loves this terracotta floor except me, because they don't have to clean it...). 

Oh well, rant over. Maybe tomorrow the sun will shine and my mood will improve...

Maybe it's the vile turn in the weather - it's been chucking it down for most of July - but lately I've been thinking about bedding for winter. And I've decided I want to wake up in a bedroom full of flowers.

The rest of our house is pretty simple, though not minimalist - white walls, hard floors in tile or wood, no carpets or rugs, etc. On a daily basis, that's the way I like things, but the bedroom, I feel, is a feminine space where one can be a bit more girly - and being the age I am and living the life I lead, I don't get to indulge my girly side a great deal.  

A couple of years ago, we moved the bedroom, which had always been on the middle floor of the house, up to the top floor, into the attic conversion. This room, which was formerly our office, is small, but has a high cathedral ceiling and a huge north-facing Velux that floods the room with light all day long. 

At night, in winter, it is glacially cold, as by the time we go to bed, the heating has been off for many hours. So overall, you must imagine, it is small and cold room, and very very bright.

For this reason, our all-white bedding has come to feel just too stark in winter. In summer, it feels fresh and clean, but prising oneself out of bed on a freezing, dark winter morning, or nipping back to bed for an afternoon kip seems to me to cry out for something prettier and cosier. 

Therefore enter the florals, and I have decided it will be a floral overload, as the sewing room is teeming with unused yardage. Before we even bought this house, I bought up lots of ends of rolls of fabric in Liberty's basement, which were 'botanical' florals - very crisp, clear designs on backgrounds of eau-de-nil, beige, deep petrol blue, yellow and even black - very Cath Kidston, if you like. I also have old chintz curtains, gingham check yardage, gingham seersucker, and a 20-year-old set of Pierre Frey floral bedlinen in a size way too small for our current superkingsize duvet.

So last weekend, I set to and began by making the correct size duvet cover. This involved adding strips of fabric about 15 inches wide to the top and sides of the old 'double' size duvet cover. I don't have fabric that matches, so on one side I've used a dark pink cotton plaid and on the other a pink gingham seersucker. And I must admit I'm very pleased with the result. I've made ties for closures, which also means the duvet can be tied to the iron bedstead to stop it moving around too much. 

These changes mean that a duvet cover that had become effectively redundant for several years now has a new lease of life, and it is a much more comfortable arrangement than the former sheet-and-duvet combi, given that the DH thrashes around all night.

I've made pillowcases to go with it - not matching, but clashing, using eight different patterns altogether, then next up will be finishing a second duvet cover, in a patchwork of lemon, sky blue and mint florals. The trick with clashing and matching florals is to introduce a colour-toning stripe, plaid, paisley or spot to break them up and make the whole thing look like an old patchwork, so I have also bought the striped cotton above, and aim to use some blue and white seersucker I took from an old dress.

What with that and my birdsong CD playing in the bedroom, I hope it feel like a haven this winter. 

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...