TWO dAYS wITHOUT rAIN!

Really!  This has been a very wet, cloudy and cool summer season in France.  Enough rain that I couldn't de-weed the courtyard effectively until now.  Now my excuses are few, except I hate it and still don't want to pay for it to have it done.  So Roundup is now on all the weeds and greens growing where they shouldn't throughout the courtyard.  I put it in 48 hours ago and if it were warmer it would have all wilted by now, instead it looks much as it did, a pisser!  Anyway I hacked at the awful blackberry bushes and wild climbing roses that have inhabited the former courtyard garden circle hoping to at least gain some degree of control before winter and the real deluge begins.  Maybe the winter will be a cold, frigid one that would help keep the growth down too.  We won't know until we come back next year.

I've started filling holes used by the mice, ratons etc. to invade my kitchen...they have been largely removed thanks to the efforts of Cara Cat-Ture and Mucca The Magnificent.  They have done themselves proud.  Dozens made into snacks day after day, week after week.  Now I'm plugging the holes into the little larder and the room itself where pipes exit and have been widened by the mouse highway krew (similar to Cal Trans in California only more efficient!). 

Painting the front door has brought this on...this afternoons weather...Thunderstorms...bah, humbug!

Duck Breast for dinner, Brocolli, Cannoli Beans







 

They Start With 9...Right?

Well, she's at either 8 or 7 depending on whether it counts as 2 jumps or 1.  We had breakfast, French hen eggs as an omelet w/ squash, red and yellow sweet peppers and young gouda cheese and coffee.  Then off to St. Aout (San Too), Saint August to all you Catholics, to a huge brocante (junk/attic/yard/boot sale).  We parked after scouring the neighborhood area under a large oak tree and wandered through the streets ogling at the offerings, baby clothes galore, rusted tools, misc. wrecked items, old pots and pans, some ancient ceramic pots, electric supplies etc.  What junk.  We did this little activity for about an hour then having gotten quite hot and sweaty veered back towards the car and motored out into the beautiful French countryside for a while or two.   Over hill and dale, past wheat fields now shorn, corn stalks 6 feet high, groups of Charollet cattle for both meat and milk, old fallen down barns and such, beautiful!  Then homeward bound on the Lignieres - La Chatre road.  Parked across the street I ran into the Proxi next door for some potatoes and Kelly went on to Maison Blanche.  Upon returning I heard a crying cat, not inside...outside!  Huh?!  Sure enough as I exited the laundry room door there was Cara Cat-Ture panting like crazy and screaming "Help Meow!" as loud as she could from the TOP OF MY KITCHEN!  How in the hell?!  So back into the house I ran upstairs and opened the window in Kelly's sewing room to let her in...Meow! Me-Owwww!  with this awful desperate whine attached.  "Cara, Cara" I called again and again but she wouldn't climb up the tiles (hot as an oven!).  I then went downstairs and headed to the barn to get the 25 foot chestnut ladder (100lbs at least!) to go to her rescue but was called off by Kelly.  Cara had leaped from the roof the 12 feet to the ground and was now being taken, in arms, into the house.  So I figured it unfolded like this. 
Cara Cat-Ture was in the attic, she climbed or jumped into the open attic window ad her curiosity led her to climb out onto the roof itself.  Soon wither her feet being roasted by the slate tiles and getting increasingly hot she soon leapt to the top of my kitchen roof.  It's the only way there that I can see available to her.  So...8 or 7 left?