Happy Easter

Easter - a celebration of spring! Back in the US, we'd usually celebrate with a dinner of ham, but here the only sort of ham available is what we think of as country ham, delicious in its own way, but quite different from the juicy, slightly sweet ham we'd have for dinner. On Friday, we went to the LeClerc in Bergerac to do our grocery shopping and came across something else that's seldom if ever seen here - chicken breasts with the bone and skin not removed. I was so excited to see these that they became my choice for Easter dinner. Since John doesn't eat chicken - or any other sort of birds, he opted for a roulade de porc Provencal, from the butcher counter. Both were wonderful. With them, we had a potato gratin and some fresh asparagus - and wine of course.

Dessert came from one of the local patisseries. These are called framboisiers and consist of layers of cream, sponge cake and raspberries. They, like absolutely all French pastries, are delicious. Amazingly enough, though, in the years we've been here, I've grown a bit bored with French pastries, and don't eat them all that often. Instead I yearn for apple pie, pecan pie and ordinary gold cake with white butter cream frosting - in other words, standard birthday cake! And I secretly long for powdered sugar doughnuts....

Before dinner, I picked this bouquet of flowers from the yard and garden. There's one of the last blooms from a lilac, a rose from the bush climbing up the trellis in front of the house, pansies and snapdragons that have been blooming all winter, and with them some wild flowers: dandelions, daisies, a couple of others whose names I don't know, and even some sprigs of grass. Nothing like flowers to celebrate spring.

Farm Country

The hay was cut two days ago, sat drying in the sun for a day, and then today it's swooped up by an impressive piece of machinery, and then sprayed into a truck running beside the giant machine.

Spring!

This is the view looking from our veggie garden towards the treed area - which I call the forest - and to the field behind. This is the first time we've seen these tulips. Last year this time, we were finishing up packing for the move, so we missed most of the spring flowers. Right now the air is perfumed with lilacs, apple blossoms, mock orange and wisteria. It's delightful. I plan to add to this by planting a honeysuckle under the bedroom window.

On Friday, we were in the nearby town of Beaumont and saw preparations for some event - maybe the brocante (antiques and used furniture and whatnots) that we forgot to go to yesterday. The local butcher had added a huge donkey statue in front of his shop. It's soft, covered in black cloth - a cloth mother? (Reminded of this by seeing a BBC show on TV about Harry Harlow and his monkey experiments) The donkey is carrying a shopping bag bearing the butcher's name, and stands beside a display of photos of people sporting these bags. I suppose anyone who is anyone must have one - or so the butcher wishes anyway!

A Different Sort of Lunch

A belated St. Patrick's Day lunch. I love corned beef and cabbage, or New England Boiled Dinner if you prefer. But here in France corned beef is not available, so you have to make your own. I got started late, and the corned beef wasn't ready until this week. We cooked it up today and served it with the traditional potatoes, cabbage, carrots, turnip and parsnip - with a bit of horseradish on the side. John said it was the best corned beef he ever had, so I must have done it right! (I almost forgot to take the photo - I had already started eating when I remembered - thus the already partially eaten potato) We'll follow this up with soup made from the broth and leftover veggies, corned beef hash, Reuben sandwiches, who knows what else. Hmmm. Can't get pumpernickel bread here either. I'll have to search up a recipe.

Spring!!!

This past Monday, the first day of spring, we had lunch in the town of Cadouin, a lovely World Heritage site, where we met our friend Liz at a local restaurant. Liz is a terrific artist and is painting murals in a private house in the town. They're gorgeous! Didn't take any photos since it's someone's private house. Anyway, here it is, the first day of spring and it was warm enough to eat outside. John celebrates by relaxing in the sun.

A New Toy

This is Pogo, the latest addition to our stable of large toys - you know, things like washing machines, cars, front end loaders. (Hmmm; don't have one of those) Pogo is a riding mower, shown here in the front lot of the BricoMarché, a French hardware/home improvement store chain, and will be delivered to us next Wednesday and I can start riding around on it. Last year we hired a local fellow to mow the lawn through the summer and at 30€ per week it adds up, considering that it's already time to mow. Every day we hear the sound of mowers in the neighborhood. It sounds like summer, and here it is only March11. Last year we also didn't have this young fellow mow very often in August and we were sorry - the grass got tall enough to harbor chiggers and they had a very nice feast - on us. We itched like mad for weeks from those little monsters. I've read that an important thing that needs to be done if you want to avoid having chiggers in the lawn is to keep it mowed short in the late summer. So, here we are - armed and ready to do battle with microscopic arachnid larvae. Not to mention keeping the lawn looking good.

Home Improvement

In the last couple of weeks, I've gotten back to stripping wallpaper in the living room, which had the most atrocious stuff on the walls - a mixtures of pale, sickly blues, and all of the paper wrinkled and stained. Horrible! Here's a photo of the (very cluttered) living room from when we first saw this house.

You can catch glimpses of the wallpaper behind the furniture and wall ornaments.

Here's a photo of the current state of the living room:

This the same corner in the previous photo, with a whole different collection of clutter! That unpainted bookcase is currently serving as a place to put paint trays and brushes and miscellaneous other tools. The far wall, now painted a warm neutral grey, will next have shelving added, because we've run out of places for books. But the other wall, at least the area to the right of the full bookcase, will have quite a different paint job - here's a photo of its current state.

Here you can see the layer of wallpaper that was under the really ugly stuff - not that this stuff is all that better! Anyway, while sitting at my computer in a chair by the window, I kept looking at that patch of paper and plaster and thinking how great it would be to have a painting just that size right on the wall. So why not, eh??!! So here it is, the current state. It will take some time to do this but I'll post photos as the work progresses.

Catching Up Again

Hi all! It's been a long time since I've updated this blog, but now that life has settled down a bit I'm going to do a bit of catching up. First, here's photos of friends who visited with us last September. One of the places we visited was the town of Sarlat. Here's a photo of one of the pedestrian streets in this lovely old town.

And here's a photo of some gorgeous window boxes on the front of the mairie.
We also went to one of the local towns, Lalinde, that has a lovely old covered market that serves as a good place to sit and enjoy a cool drink. Here's my artist friend Leslie:

And here's John with Leslie's husband Tony.