The fruit of our hard labor...

As I mentioned earlier, a part of our activities at my house in Milhac was to plant flowers and tend to the garden. When we returned in July, we saw the beautiful fruit of our labor...






Actually, with the unusually rainy weather of late June and July, it was more work keeping the weeds from outgrowing the garden than keeping the flowers blooming! The weather this summer in France has been unusually cool and wet... the weather in July and August is usually hovering near 40 Celsius (100 Fahrenheit), but this year, none of that!! we had a few days of beautiful hot weather and then a lot of cooler, cloudy and rainy days... today, in Paris, it is about 16C (60F), windy, cloudy and it feels like November!! That is unheard of!!


Anyway, during the first week of July, we attempted a last excursion to the ocean, this time near Bordeaux, in the Bassin d'Arcachon. We had decent weather but the wind was very strong for two out of the three days we were there and made the ocean prohibitively rough! However, there are a few very cool sights in that area, including the Pila Dune, which is an enormous wind-generated sand dune, which is still growing and engulfing whatever is on its path. Despite the many tourists that are lining up to get up on top of it, once you are up there, the size of the dune dwarfs the crowds!




On our last day at the beach, we attempted a surf session... it was interesting... the waves were still quite rough and the wind still blowing, although much less than the previous days. There was a powerful side-shore current and wave after wave after wave, which basically was just too much... after trying unsuccessfully to catch a wave, we stayed on the inside and caught white wash instead!! :) It'll be interesting to return to good waves in Hawaii, i don't remember what it's like!



During our stay in Milhac, in addition to working on the yard, we also did a number of outings in the area, including to two old castles... One of them has been kept up over the centuries and is a beautiful building, still occupied by private owners, but with some areas open to the public.




The other was forgotten after the middle ages and left to crumble for a few centuries before someone attempted to unearth the past.



So it was left in its original form, as a war construction. In a lot of ways, that castle resembles ancient greek or Roman ruin sites, and is a really interesting archeological site, very unusual for this region, where most castles have evolved with time.

Unlike the fickle waves of France, the castles did not disappoint!