More On Autumn

Autumn Summary
Signs of winter came and then receded, so it's definitely still autumn. People are sitting out late into the evening on the cafe terraces, admittedly with pullovers and jackets on, but sitting out in comfort. And I've been playing boules in the afternoons in my shirtsleeves.

A week ago there was snow down to about 2000ft. The surrounding hills had snow towards the top and Mt Ventoux had taken on its familiar Christmas cake look, with snow down to the Mt Serein ski station. A small puff of cloud on the summit gave it an almost dream-like quality, viewed from below. In the middle of the wintery spell cloud was clinging halfway down the hills between here and Buis. The “winter” lasted only 2-3 days however and after the past few days of sunshine have totally eliminated the snow, even on the summit of Mt Ventoux.

Moreover, the brief wintery spell wasn't enough to knock the leaves off many trees and so the autumn leaves colour show goes on. The show seems even to have improved recently with more red showing up amongst the yellow, orange and brown. Tomorrow I plan to go up to Le Crestet, which provides a high-level view of the Ouvèze and Toulourenc valleys and see if I can take a decent photo from there.

Garden
The gaura and gallardias at the back have continued blooming and been joined by a blaze of chrysanthemums. These are ones I bought last year, on sale in all the garden centres at this time of the year, which failed miserably in the pots on my balcony and survived the winter. So I dumped them in the back garden last spring, since when they have gone from strength to strength.

I've also started planting the blue pansies in my pots in the front, which were so enjoyed by my neighbours last year. I've managed to vacate two of the bigger pots to be planted up and a third is awaiting the final demise of French marigolds which show no sign of stopping blooming at the moment.

Shades of Jean de Florette
At a recent gathering I got talking to Paul, an Englishman who has been out here for 30 years or more. We got onto the topic of changing attitudes and he recounted how a Parisian couple bought a house and some land overlooking the house we were visiting. They apparently intended to start a small market-garden holding and were drilling for water in various places over their land. They never found any and eventually sold up and moved on. The people they sold to also wanted to find water and asked a neighbour if he knew where it could be found. He did and they found it. When Paul asked the neighbour why he hadn't pointed this out to their predecessors, who could clearly be seen drilling earlier, and he replied: “They never asked me”. All this was a propos of discussion about how and whether people were welcoming or accepting or not and our respective experiences with other nationalities, French, English, Spanish and Italian. Whatever, it's a changing world.