The ‘tournesols’ (sunflowers) are here! :)

Photos above are of our first sunflowers from the 100 or so planted - it’s very exciting but a little disappointing at the same time - exciting because who doesn’t love sunflowers - disappointing because I planted them along this beautiful border on the left side of our courtyard and due to the direction of the sun (duh! I’m not very bright apparently - we live and learn), they are all facing away from the courtyard - however, if I move our outdoor dining table into the vegetable patch we can dine and enjoy the view of the lovely sunflowers, sadly they just refuse to look at us whilst we sit in the courtyard!!

So - next year the sunflowers will be planted along the barn wall so they shall look at us all day but this year I’ll just have to make do with the knowledge that I’ve brought seeds to life  (despite their ungratefulness and refusal to look at me) which is always a wonderful thing!

We spent a lovely evening with some good friends who used to live in Cayman and more recently were traveling around France in an RV and stopped by on their way back to the UK - it was really nice to catch up with them and show them around our corner of France (more precisely our house, courtyard and fields and not much else!).  Rose (pictured above with Tony and below with her husband, Simon and Tony) is a yoga instructor and so before they left today we had an informal yoga class with her which was really enjoyable and much needed since our return to our daily bike rides with a vengeance - we are now well stretched and looking forward to our drive tomorrow a few hours down south to visit some other chums - sadly we’ll only be with them for 3 nights but any longer we just felt wasn’t fair to the veggies who need our love and attention (and our watering)!

I shall be offline until Monday when we return but will be back on with photos of our weekend adventures after that.

We’ve also got some stonemasons starting work on the piggery next Wednesday so will be sure to be updating you on that progress along with photos - in addition, we have to visit the “Mairie” to obtain permission for the works so am sure will have an interesting tale to tell of how we got on there - I would imagine talking to the Mairie about building works will test our french a little more than the odd aperitif or lunch date has so far......

Bon (nearly) weekend!