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...

C'est le printemps...

Forecast is for grey and rain all week, except for Tuesday, when it is supposed to be sunny and 7O° degrees. And so it goes, Spring in the south of France. Do I wear the winter coat, the boots, take the umbrella or get the flip flops out? Makes getting myself and the 2 little ladies dressed in the morning so much more 'fun'.

Life is ticking along pleasantly here. Just booked our summer holiday near Sansepolcro in Tuscany, the calendar is filling up with summer visitors, and had a great night on Saturday night at an outdoor (okay, heated terrace) local food and wine fête in Béziers. Summer is so close I can almost taste it.

On the agenda this week, delving into the winter-torn garden, a very first gymnastics meet for my 7-year old, and a trip to the circus for my 5-year old (the one child who is most likely to run away with the circus).

Happy Spring wherever you are, may your days be filled with bright yellow flowers, lunches in the sunshine, and not too much Spring cleaning...

Spring cleaning...

My dear walking English megaphone arrives today for a week stay, so I'm frantically cleaning the house in the way you do only just before someone comes to sleep and bathe in your house for an extended period of time. I've discovered parts of my oven are dirty that I didn't even know existed, and it appears that the inside of the bathroom door is really meant to be cream, not the dirty grey that I thought it was (apparently, that was just a layer of the little ladies' grubby handprints). Now I know.

I thought Spring cleaning was supposed to happen as the Spring sunshine pours in the windows (which is suppose to highlight the fact that your windows need doing, right?), but we've had an awful lot of rain recently, so I could have easily put off this tedious task for another couple of weeks. And I'm more confused than usual because normally my father-in-law brings the rain with him, enabling him to express his favorite opinion that the weather is no better here in the south of France than it is in England. God help us if it's sunny all week; he might enjoy the sunshine so much that he'll decide to come more often. Bless him.

On the bright side though, the little ladies went back to school today (she says, fists punching the air and dancing around the living room). Don't get me wrong, I love spending soooo much quality time with the little angels, but seriously, do you know how much damage (both structural and esthetic) two little children can do to a place in the span of two weeks? I'm now paying for the fact that midway through Easter break I threw my hands up in the air and thought, why bother, I'll only have to put it away, clean it, straighten it, wipe it up, or glue it back together again in 5 minutes.

At least while they are trapped in school for the day I might get a chance to catch up. That is unless my father-in-law starts trashing the place...