Spring in the Languedoc...

We now return to our regular scheduled programming....

Just on the off chance, we swung by the airport on Saturday afternoon to see if the full flight back to Bristol had a couple of empty seats. They did, and finally everyone has been returned to their rightful places, albeit 10 days later than planned, and the panic created by the thought of having to live together for the rest of our lives is slowly fading into a distant (but not quite yet humorous) memory.

There is already talk of the next family visit in September. I shall be monitoring the state of all volcanoes within a 2,000 mile radius between now and then very carefully indeed.

And the little ladies are back in school after their 2-week Spring holiday. They came home from school before the break wearing their winter coats and boots, and have now gone back in sandals, sunscreen and short sleeves.

The garden has gone from bare-branches to full-leaf in a matter of 10 days- the hot pink geraniums are flowering in their pots, the purple and white irises are just about finished, and the petals from the blousy pale pink peonies are already scattered on the ground.

The vineyards are budding, changing the hilly landscape around us from stark lines to swathes of green, with cherry and almond blossoms, yellow gorse, and flowering wild rosemary adding little dashes of brillant colour. The sky is that bright, cornflower blue I remember from my childhood set of Crayola crayons. Our windows are open and the birds' nests in the garden are full of movement and chirping.

This has to be my favourite time of year in the Languedoc, before the scorching, bleaching sun reaches its full strength, before the hoardes of holidaymakers crowd the roads, before a fan becomes a necessity for sleeping on a sweltering summer night. Soon running and dog-walking will need to be done very early or very late, and the warmth of the sun on the back of my head will become an unwelcome prospect.

But before I have to arm myself with shade-finding strategies, I'm going to enjoy sitting in my hammock with a good book in the Spring sunshine, where neither the beach or pool yet beckons me, and the act of getting into a swimsuit is still a comfortable couple of months away.

Hope you, too, have a hammock somewhere with your name on it...