Exploring

We had a cloudy day yesterday (25^th June). The temperature dropped to a mere 28. Inside the mill, it dropped to 24.5 which was really comfortable. So we did some work – sweeping, dusting, tidying up for me and working on the hedge for Bill.

The water in the pool was still silky warm, but today it felt a good deal cooler. Refreshing and still a lovely treat. I took Tim across the stream this morning and had a plod around the field where the farmer was bashing the hedge to bits. He has been back and baled his hay, so I felt he wouldn’t mind. We don’t trample around hay fields, but wait until they’re cut and baled. I Googled  laws of trespass in France last year and couldn't find any. As long as we don’t do damage, it seems we can wander. On the practical side, I would never wander where there is livestock, because the local cattle are big beasts and don’t look friendly.

Sad to say, the newly cut field beyond the stream was uninteresting. Tim loved it, lots of new smells to explore. It proved to be almost two fields in the shape of a letter B. Imagine the I is the stream, and the bottom curve is the partly open segment from which the sparse road traffic can be seen whizzing along. The hidden segment must have been wonderful for the local deer and foxes – a perfect hideaway surrounded by trees. It will be again when the grasses grow. Although it has not rained for days, the stream is higher than it was, a good inch or two higher. I suppose the water must come up via springs. The springs in the field beside the house have never stopped running no matter how hot it was.

En France

After a long journey by car I am now resident en France for the next few weeks. Good to be back.  The sun is not at full strength to day but even so I gave up sitting in it after an hour. My pale white English skin will turn lobster pink if I don’t expose myself bit by bit. (If that sounds vaguely rude, I apologise.) But given time and patience I shall turn brown; I have the sort of skin chemicals or proteins or whatever it is that turns sin brown. A lady from Israel, sitting beside me by the lake during my time as a summer camp councillor in Maine, once remarked that I had a “nice colour in my skin.” Not everyone has, she explained.

This time when we arrived the first thing that struck me about this green lush valley in the Dordogne is the complete absence of sound. Granted the birds sing with extraordinary energy and the wind rustles through the millions of green, shiny leaves, but the sound of humans is absent. Gone. Disappeared. The distant chug of a tractor mowing an adjacent field later this morning was something worthy of my getting up and taking a look.

I think it may have inspired DH, because he is now outside, wearing my sunhat, driving the mini tractor round and round the meadows to bring the knee-high grass to a manageable level. A shame in a way, because among the grasses are the yellow iris, and all the other wildflowers that bloom unseen and keep the bees and presumably themselves happy. Near the lake, the young frogs will leap out of harm’s way ahead of him.