Catching up

Oops, it's been longer since we've written than we meant. So what's been happening? Not too much really. We're both still getting over our colds/flu, and Ed's been down with the gastrointestinal bug that's going around to boot. Kaye still has a big of hanging-on cough, but otherwise we're both on the mend now.

The weather is turning to spring, with lots of gray days and spring showers. (Starting this coming Sunday, though, the forecast shows nary a cloud for a whole week!) Cranes have been flying over in great numbers. Noisy fellows they are. You can hear them coming before you see them. There are more white violets this spring than we remember from previous years, and fewer purple ones. Not sure what that means. Primroses and cowslips are up everywhere. Our tête-à-têtes, brought from the Netherlands, brightly fill a corner of the yard. Camellias are blooming and the buds on the rhododendrons are fattening. Here's a sprinkling of white violets, covering at least twice the area as last year, in a corner of the South Forty (with the neighbor's chickens behind the fence).

We're facing a bit of a dilemma with our fuel supply. We're low on fuel and would fill it up now if it were winter, but it's almost time when we don't need heating at all and the price of fuel is high right now. So we've turned off the fuel heater, planning to wait till mid-summer to order and hoping for lower prices. We can still have a wood fire in the kitchen if we're cool.

Two Sundays ago we went to a Repas Fruits de Mer in a nearby village. The food turned out to be very camera worthy, although neither of us had expected this. Two of us sitting opposite each other were served an enormous platter, almost as wide as the table (about half a meter long), heaped with seafood. There were a half dozen oysters each; a half crab each; three kinds of shrimp, small, medium, and large; whelks; a huge pile of cockles and mussels (alive, alive, oh). All had been brought that morning fresh from La Rochelle. My oh my.

Last Monday we two of the trees for our "parental grove," one tree per parent. The other two trees will be a bit harder to find, I fear. (Pecans are not very common in France.)

We found a funny sight in neighborhood. There's a pile of rubble on one of the paths we walk frequently. Coming up in the mess, all in a row, are a group of tulips and narcissus. It's hard to see how they could have been dumped in such a straight line. Tulip on left, narcissus on right.

Here's one of our camellia flowers, just to light your day.

And, of course, there's no Carte Vitale yet, but it's still too early to expect it.