And now for a short break

Ed is extremely happy that the shelving is now finished! For a small celebration, we had a lovely short break for the (sixth annual) Bach à Pâques Festival, which was centered around Saint Maixent L'École in Deux-Sèvres, less than a two-hour drive north of here. We arrived Sunday in time for lunch at the hotel, which was passable, but nothing special. This being goat cheese country, the three goat cheeses after the main course were the best part. Post-prandially, we followed a walking tour of the hidden gardens in the town, La Mothe Saint-Heray.

Later we drove to St Maixent where we found, with only a bit of difficulty, our venue, an old abbey church, found a parking place, had a bit of a picnic dinner in the car, and attended a lovely concert of Bach motets and cantatas.

For breakfast, the hotel served us tourteau fromagé, a Deux-Sèvres specialty, instead of the more usual croissant. (The black "topping" did not taste especially burnt. ) After breaking our fast, we drove around the area and visited a lovely Romanesque church, St. Hilaire in Melle, a major stop on one of the routes that are part of the Way of St. James, the pilgrimage to the tomb of St. James in Santiago de Compostela.

After exploring the church, we had a real picnic at a nearby park, then made our way back to the hotel where we parked and walked to our second concert at the nearby Orangerie, the remaining part of a now disappeared chateau. This was an entertaining group of small pieces, by Telemann and Bach, played by a group of young musicians, accompanying the soprano from the previous night's concert on some pieces.

(For people with time on their hands, at Ed's suggestion, Kaye posted all our pictures of this trip on Facebook.)

Before we went away, we picked up our lawn mower following its sharpening and tune-up, but the weather didn't cooperate for mowing, and the lawn kept busy growing before we finally got to it. The afternoon we returned from La Mothe was suitably dry and sunny. Here's what it looked like before we mowed, with marguerites, primroses (flowers now fading), and clover at full strength:

Ed mowed while Kaye weedwhacked/strimmed as far as the cord would reach. (We tried to take an "after" photo, but the camera was not in a cooperative mood, sorry.) The tree blooming pink is a Prunus, some kind of an ornamental cherry. The pink bit is grafted onto another type. The few branches, now removed, sprouting from below the graft were blooming with small white single flowers, while the upper branches are blooming larger pink double flowers.

Ed has now started with re-sanding the mezzanine floor, which is the biggest task remaining before the furniture arrives. We're not sure what went wrong when Sally did it, but the "finished" floor she left us wasn't anything you'd want to walk barefoot on.