Highlights this month -

• Sandy Scovell - member of the month
• Book Club - New book for September
• Gardening -  Late Summer Colour

Message from our President 

Bienvenue!

Welcome to the website of the Dordogne Ladies Club International. We are a vibrant and enthusiastic community of women of all ages and nationalities (with English as the lingua franca) who have settled across a wide area of the Dordogne. The DLCI was formed almost 35 years ago with the original aim of cultural exchange and providing mutual support for new lives in another country and we remain true to that today.

There are many opportunities to meet regularly, both informally and through more structured events, which are designed both to entertain and inform. We enjoy exploring the beautiful countryside through our guided walks. We are also very proud to acknowledge that we raise significant funds for local charities.

Some of our members work and many, though retired, are active on a voluntary basis in our local communes. Some of us have been in France for many years and others have only just arrived. Whatever your situation, you will find a warm welcome from the DLCI.

I hope I have whetted your appetite and that after you have browsed our website, you will get in touch! I feel very privileged to belong to such an active and friendly association and I look forward to meeting you in the near future.

Cordialement

Kathy John

Dordogne Ladies Book Club 
We are off to a great start in the Dordogne Ladies Book Club! Our second meetings in Monpazier and Bergerac took place in August.   Members have added comments about A Gentleman in Moscow the books we have just read on our Facebook page.  It was generally regarded as a good choice of book we all enjoyed it.  We have included a passage from the book above and hope it will encourage you to think of reading it and maybe joining us in the book club. 
The vote for our next read closes at 5 pm tonight 1/9.  Here is the shortlist: 

All visible things - Brian McPhee
The Man in the Red Coat - Julian Barnes
Sophia - Anita Anand
The Whaleboat House - Mark Mills

We have 20 members of the Book Club now with two new members joining this month. Welcome to Jan Dales and Gaye Galliver.  

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Book Club Passage 

 For September we have chosen to share with you a passage from the book we chose to read in August "A Gentleman in Moscow" by Amor Towles we hope you agree it demonstrates the eloquence with which this book is written. 
"Having acknowledged that a man must master his circumstances or otherwise be mastered by them, the Count thought it worth considering how one was most likely to achieve this aim when one had been sentenced to a life of confinement. 
For Edmond Dantes in the Château d'if, it was thoughts of revenge that kept him clear minded. unjustly imprisoned, he sustained himself by plotting the systematic undoing of his personal agents of villainy.  For Cervantes, enslaved by pirates in Algiers, it was the promise of pages as yet unwritten that spurred him on.  While for Napoleon on Elba, strolling among chickens, fending off flies, and sidestepping puddles of mud, it was visions of a triumphal return to Paris that galvanized his will to persevere.
But the Count hadn't the temperament for revenge; he hadn't the imagination for epics; and he certainly hadn't the fanciful ego to dream of empires restored. No. His model for mastering his circumstances would be a different sort of captive altogether: and Anglican washed ashore. Like Robinson Crusoe stranded on the Isles of Despair, the Count would maintain his resolve by committing to the business of practicalities.  Having dispensed with dreams of quick discovery, the world's Crusoe's seek shelter and a source of fresh water;  they teach themselves to make fire from flint; they study their island's topography, its climate, its flora and fauna, all the while keeping their eyes trained for the sails on the horizon and footprints in the sand."

Penguin Books March 2019 released in USA

Gardening Column
​by Christine Lees

Late summer colour

I am a member of a gardening club which has not met since February due to Covid 19 restrictions.  We have our first meeting at the end of September, to which we are supposed to bring a vase of flowers from our garden.  This is going to be a real challenge for me, as although I have quite a few late summer flowers at the moment there are unlikely to be many in a month's time.  

You may be finding that following a lot of colour in the spring, early and mid summer, there is not much in late summer and early autumn, especially as in this part of France everything seems to flower about a month earlier than in the UK. I planted 2 new beds with grasses and late summer flowering perennials last year, and although I had to replace some plants after the winter the beds have been generally successful.  The one planted with orange and yellow flowers has been the better of the 2, there are a lot of late summer daisy-flowered plants in these colours, such as Rudbeckia, Coreopsis, Helenium, Echinacea as well as Achillea and Kniphofia. Good varieties include Rudbeckia 'Goldsturm', 'Herbstsonne', Coreopsis 'Moonbeam', Helenium 'Moerheim Beauty', Achillea 'Terracotta', and 'Moonshine'.  All these flowers are great for bees, butterflies and other pollinating insects.  I also have yellow and orange tinged grasses.

My second bed is based on reds and purples, next year I intend to plant some plants with larger flowers in this bed, but there are many Salvias, Sedums, Eupatoriums and Sanguisorbas in these colour ranges.  Also of course Dahlias have a fantastic range of foliage and flowers in reds and purples. 

Some late flowering bulbs, which are beautiful at this time of year include Gladiolus murielae, formerly Acidanthera, which are planted in spring and have beautiful delicately scented white flowers with purple blotches in the centre.  They are cheap to buy and flower well in the garden borders as well as pots.

If you find that 'Gardeners World' whilst a great programme is not enough gardening tv for you, 'The Beechwood Garden' on BBC Scotland and Diarmuid Gavin's programmes on BBC Northern Ireland are very good viewing, currently also shown on BBC 2.   Diarmuid Gavin is a Chelsea prizewinning garden designer with very modern designs but his programmes and books are very down to earth and practical.

'Garden Rescue' on daytime BBC provides interesting viewing of gardens being designed and created by Charlie Dimmock, water garden expert, Harry and David Rich, also prize winning designers, and Arit Anderson who often features on Gardeners World.

Sandy Scovell

Our member of the month is​
​Sandy Scovell

My husband, Graham, had always wanted to live in a field in France and in 1996 he got his wish.  We had bought a rather broken down little fermette with an adjacent barn sitting on the top of a ridge with great views and terraced land.   We were told that the previous owner had used it as a holiday house but had made the mistake of taking a girlfriend there while his wife was away and had paraded the said girlfriend round the village.  Naturally when this piece of gossip reached the wife’s ears, he was told in no uncertain terms never to set foot in the village again and to sell the house and holiday elsewhere.  Our good luck.

It was our intention to renovate the living quarters and convert the barn to be part of the house.  In our innocence we had proudly saved £8,000 to pay for these renovations.   Some £40,000 later, we had done it, thanks to Graham working in Paris and Germany Monday to Friday for around three years, leaving me to deal with all the building works.    Hence my French vocabulary consisted mainly of building terms and with a rather strange accent.   After 15 years and when we had both had limb operations, we decided to sell;  at the time I was immobile and not allowed to put one of my feet to the ground.  The Monday morning arrived when Graham left for the airport to go to Germany, I was wondering how on earth I was going to look after myself until he came home on Friday evening.  DLC, as it was then, to the rescue.  Everyday someone turned up with flowers, my prescriptions, shopping, even meals on a plate ready for the microwave.  I was very touched and grateful.

The house sold surprisingly quickly and we moved to a big village near Bordeaux to have easier access to the Grand Theatre and the opera.  It was a big mistake and it didn’t take long for us to réalise we missed our previous environment and the friends we had left there.  It took another two years to sell up and we were very happy to move back to the area we had  missed so much.

Sadly five years ago Graham had to move to a  retirement home as he was suffering from Parkinson’s.  He is now virtually immobile but thankfully I can visit him fairly freely subject to Covid restrictions.   Having now lived alone for 5 years, I find i have acquired a few extra talents that I used to rely on Graham for:  pulling a wine cork no problem, opening various bottles and cans etc., especially those incorrectly marked “ouverture facile”, French tax forms,  closing wonky out of line shutters, moving heavy plant pots, etc.   I find my most effective pieces of equipment are screwdrivers, oven cloth, and a lightweight hammer ( useful for all sorts of things), if nothing else works, bash it.

I think the DLCI is a splendid organisation, I know it takes a lot of work to keep it going successfully so a big thank you to the Committee for their inspirations and application.

Sandy Scovell
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Members on the Map

Charities 

The Dordogne Ladies Club International was founded to provide friendship and support as well as to raise money for local charities.  We aim to do this in a way that is sustainable and maintains the beautiful environment in which we live.  We look after our planet the way she looks after us. 
We are proud that in the last five years we have given in excess of 20,000 euros in donations to local charities chosen by our members.  In 2020 the members will be nominating and choosing new charities to receive donations.