Update
The weather up to last weekend has been unexceptional, more or less what you would expect at this time of the year, rather wetter than usual but with quite a few warm sunny days. Then at the weekend we had two days of 29 degrees in the midday sun. They filled me with foreboding of what we might get later in the summer but the last few days have been cooler, helped by the Mistral deciding to take a hand.
Anyway the longer daylight hours have woken the village up and there are now groups of people on the cafe terraces most evenings, the first cycling teams streaming through and generally more life in the streets. The Cafe des Sports closed for a couple of months, nobody seemed to know why, but has reopened. Summer is about to begin.
I have been gardening almost non-stop and am sendig my cleaning lady mad. There are seedlings (and compost) on the balcony and around the house where there is sufficient light and she has to clean round them. I bring them in at night because I’ve found that rats are partial to a juicy seedling or two and, being in a rural area, rats will be around looking for food at night.
Whether or not a result of climate change two of my climbing roses in the front have already started blooming, a good 2-3 weeks earlier than usual. It has inspired me to start planting flowers naround the house that much earlier and my balcony now boasts an array of pelargoniums. On a chance visit to Lidl I found clematis on sale for 2.99 euros so couldn’t resist buying another three, which means I know have a dozen crawling over the house. The rambler roses I planted in the back garden and next to the wash-house opposite are now in full bloom but at least their timing is more or less accurate.
The allotment is already almost completely seeded and planted with just a small space in the middle which I haven’t yet decided how to use. I’m lacking sunflower seedlings this year. The plants I put in pots in the front last year have mostlykept their foliage preventing the seeds the birds drop from my balcony getting into the pots. I may have to grow some from seed myself. Despite the greater than usual rainfall the surface of the allotment is dry and so I have already had to start watering the seeds sown and seedlings planted there.
At the last meeting of the gardeners’ association we decided to put a lock on the entry gate. If boars got in there now it would be disastrous. The gardeners are aware of that and religiously shut the gate when leaving but others use the tables and benches around the outside and we have often found the gate left open. It has also been decided to restart the Friday evening aperitif ritual there now.
Some friends arrived from Brittany and brought me a bottle of Lambig. It’s distilled cider but not Calvados; the taste is certainly different but I’m not sure in exactly what way; it seems a bit more refined , rather less obviously made from apples.
My scrapbook for my granddaughter of her past visits here is proceeding nicely although there are some more photos that I need and I’m finding sizing the photos within the text challenging. I’m still planning on writing a book on Mollans but that will be mostly for the winter. I would need to have it finished in time for the next tourist season.
Finally I had been told that in order to vote in the forthcoming European elections I needed to register. So I went to the Mairie but it seems the process is now automatic; I was already on the electoral list. Friend Jacques suggested that the problem with the left is that it it is too splintered; the right coheres more easily. Nurture some cherished prejudices, add a dash of blind nationalism, dislike immigrants and revere money and there you have it. The left argues and splinters over philosophical details. Unfortunately I think he may be right. Where did the centre go?
