Mid-May happenings

Now that we've got a freezer, Kaye placed an order with Toupargel ("everything frozen", if you will), a company that sells, yes, frozen food. They apparently deliver to this area only once a month, although it looked like it would be more frequent in other areas. So now the freezer is stocked with an organic chicken, fava beans (which are difficult to find frozen in the shops and handy when you don't feel like or have the time for shucking, parboiling, peeling, etc.), and other goodies. We'd thought that we'd skip a month before ordering again, but the sales for next month will probably sucker us into another order.

This month's pickings at the garden club were a couple of tomato plants to join our little salad garden.

On Saturday Kaye went to a workshop for making nettle tea, not for drinking, but for a garden tonic. (Once made, it can be used, diluted, as a plant food. While it's not really an insecticide, it does strengthen resistance to insects apparently.) Since only English-speakers were in attendance, the workshop was given in English, which made it easy, if non-challenging. We think all the local French have been making nettle tea all their lives, so don't need instruction. Nettles are easy enough to find. Now we need to get a garbage can with lid and some some started.

Sunday we drove to Chalais, in the very south of Charente to see a concert in the (second annual) chamber music festival there. Last year we saw the notices, but didn't get ourselves organized to go. This year we'll go to two of the concerts. They are given in a lovely old church, next to a rather tattered chateau. We passed through some lovely areas on the way there, so we have some new places to explore. Unfortunately we drove off without the camera so there are no pictures of this visit.

We hope our spell of cold weather is finally over. The sun is out and the temperatures are rising.

The two twayblades on the rut are hanging in there, although one is pretty beat up and neither of them are growing as quickly as the other ones did.

In response to many calls about Ed's Carte Vitale, we had a phone message, in rapid-fire French, that seems to say that tout va bien, all's going well. After several listenings of the message, we think a new attestation will arrive soon (we're not sure why) followed by the form for the Carte Vitale. We'll see.