01/01/2022 Happy New Year

 The maximum temperature here today is 15C, minimum 9⁰C. Blue skies but with quite a lot of clouds. Wind 16km/h South-Easterly winds with gusts up to 30 km/h.  Dry at present but rain is forecast from tomorrow for the rest of the week.  Thursday morning we measured 46mm overnight!

Some more recent photos, eventually I will get back to all the photos that I have not had time to edit from last year!!

Watching France see the New Year in on TV at Chantilly last night.

A bit of Christmas cheer amongst the potplants.

Friends who could not travel to the UK at the last minute, because of COVID, joined us for Christmas dinner so the table was laid for four.  

The two of us on Christmas day.

27/12/21 a tough rose hanging on in winter.

30/12/21 Top : Viburnum tinus and cotoneaster berries.
Bottom : Calendula and another surviving rose that amazes me.
The centre tree is a Ginkgo biloba,

31/12/21 Calendula.

I think this is one of the Blackbird (Turdus merula) youngsters being bombed by a chaffinch!

European robin (Erithacus rubecula).

The last sunset of 2021

Take care everybody, keep well and please stay safe in these difficult times.

My local list of wildflowers. (91 Species 02/12/2021).

See also my

 Bird blog

Joining up with My Corner of the World. 

06/11/2018 Autumn colours and out to lunch - celebrating two birthdays.

Maximum temperature today 14C, minimum 8C.  Rain on and off all day and raining now. 5mm of rain measured this morning; 25km/h South-Easterly winds with up to 49 km/h gusts. 

The sunset a couple of nights back which I had not downloaded.

Driving to the restaurant today trying to get autumn colours avoiding reflection on the windscreen and raindrops!... 

As above.

Driving back home our neighbours walnut tree.

Arriving at St Sornin.  Remember I showed you the pictures of over 800 houses with roofs destroyed during a storm in July, still many are covered with plastic sheeting.....

Some are being worked on...

The restaurant has scaffolding but we were told they still have no date for when work might be done.

The place was packed so luckily we had booked for 4, the two men were celebrating. Jim on the left had his birthday yesterday and Nigel has his on Saturday.

Excellent value €14 each for a 4-course meal including wine and coffee.

The Euonymus back home is showing its autumn colours.

The Acer has silver seeds.

The Stinking Iris (Iridaceae foetidissima) has bright red seeds.

Surprisingly there are still buds on the climbing rose.

The lavender that I grew from seed is still flowering while the old plants were over weeks ago.

Good to see there are still some bees around and a few cosmos for them to collect pollen from....

As above

Last but not least a visitor to the window sill.

Eurasian blue tit (Cyanistes caeruleus).

I love the feather definition and the single raindrop on its tail.

I have at last updated my bird blog HERE