Autumn
is now in full swing here. The last of the fruit is coming off the trees – our apples
and pears already eaten but neighbours are still cropping theirs including some
huge quinces. Our freezers are full of this season’s fruit and we’re
considering getting another one, but don’t want to store so much that we can’t
get through it until the next harvest. Dilemmas, eh! Our grape vines gave a
very poor crop this year, as they have done for many of the commercial growers
in this area, due to the late frost in spring, apparently. So the vendange was completed much more quickly
than usual. In the fields most of the maize has gone, the sunflowers are
harvesting now, the beets have yet to start and next year’s oil seed rape is
about 6inches high already. The walnut tree has started to drop this years nuts so we'll have to find a place for several kilos of them as well.
We’ve
had a bit of rain and lots of dew but our stream is still pretty dry. We’re
only a couple of km from its source so we need very local rain to get it going,
and it needs to fill the mill reservoir upstream before it comes through to us.
Lots of people have complained that it
was a poor summer and although the weather was more changeable than usual the overall average
temperatures were hotter than previously. Our pool is still swimmable –
just – but our use of it is reducing with the lower air temperatures now.
No more recent trips away, but starting
to plan for both our next ones and we’ve continued with a trickle of visitors
here, which has been lovely. More to come in a couple of weeks. But the opera
season has started up and the Royal Opera House have put on a good if
traditional programme for the months ahead. Rhys has been to two already and
Jeanne to one so far. Die Zauberflöte was wonderful last
month and La Bohème, that Jeanne saw this
week, was too. Unfortunately we’re going to miss the ballet Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland on 23rd
October but there are plenty more to come. We’re also lucky to have opportunities
to see the New York Metropolitan Opera, The Paris Opera and Ballet and the
Bolshoi ballet all close to us here, via cinema screenings mostly of live
performances as they happen, in brilliant high definition. One unexpected
benefit of these performances is that they’re subtitled in French, which is
helping my language skills somewhat!
We also enjoyed
a night out at a musical evening arranged by a friend that included a
performance by a Saintonge ensemble of ancient music and a very good chorale
group, which was very entertaining. People ask us what we do here all winter,
but there’s always plenty going on, you just have to seek it out. One series of
events on at its height at the moment is a large number of 70th
birthday parties going on. Lovely to go to but a reminder that we’re all
getting on a bit!
