Sunshine - at Last!

Seems like ages since we had a day without rain, but today dawned bright and sunny and WARM! A sudden change, but I'm just grateful - and hoping it won't go straight back to cold, wet and windy with hailstones, tomorrow! All the wildflowers came out and I just had to pick some...

A friend had told me there was a brocante on today in Le Dorat and that a new café was opening for the day (as a trial) so off I went.  When I reached the town, it looked as if it had been abandoned for years.  No brocante. No café open (not even the ones that usually open) and almost no people, despite the lovely weather. And it wasn't even lunchtime! But, there you go, this is France and it doesn't work like England. Today is a national holiday and nothing is open.  I wended my weary way back home through small villages which looked as if aliens had beamed up all the locals. No children playing, no dogs sniffing each other, no chickens scratching at the edge of the road.  Where was everyone?  I don't know!!!

So, back home I thought I would weed the veg patch...

 

... a job I hadn't been able to do for weeks, due to the incessant rain.  But when I started I found that the ground was still sodden...

...this was the imprint of my welly boot from a few days ago when I planted the potatoes - in the rain - in the small area I HAD been able to clear during the 2-week heatwave in March.

I wanted to be outside, to take advantage of the sunshine, but gardening was obviously out of the question.

So I decided I would sort out the pile of stones that has accumulated in the front garden over the years...

Some of the stones were just complete rubbish, being bits of concrete, broken tiles and other debris that had been dug up at one time or another, but there were a lot of stones that could be useful - maybe they could be used in low walls, or, at the very worst, I could give them to a friend who is building lots of walls around different areas of her garden.  So I started to move the good ones from the stone pile at the front (thus making this lizard homeless)...

and forming a pile at the back of the house...

...where I hope they can be used in some way in the retaining walls I am soon having made round the garden edge of the terrace.  Then, with new gravel, my terrace will look very respectable!

But now it is almost 7 o'clock and I am going to sit on the terrace with a glass of wine, and hope that the weather continues this way for the rest of the summer!