Countryside

Rocamadour - religious sanctuary.

Stone roof in Rocamadour

I think the one most important factor in directing your life when you do not have a steady full-time job is the weather. Last week, the weather here was sunny and warm as if it was May already. It was perfect for gardening – I am a much better gardener when I don’t have a job! I manage to keep a variety of flowers alive and growing! – and for photography. We went to visit Beynac, a medieval castle overlooking the Dordogne; St Cirq Lapopie, a really pretty medieval village; and went to watch a motocross competition in the rocky hills near here.

Beynac Castle


Beynac from across the river

And we also got some gear to go fishing for trouts at the nearby river; I know nothing of fishing though, so I’m thinking I will bring a nice book and watch Paul try to fetch us dinner!

Montfort Castle

Anyway, we’re definitely not fishing or photographing this week because after May last week, we went right back into December this week… temperatures dropped and the weather switched to stormy and angry, culminating in an ice thunderstorm a few days ago.

The house before the ice storm...

The storm begins

Better not be caught outside!

It looks like it snowed!

Since then, it has remained cold, wet and windy; so we have remained indoors!
We are keeping fairly busy though; art projects are abounding…

Amongst the latest interesting experiences of the French countryside… the most shocking and painful: helping to kill chickens… as many of you know, I have small chickens at my house, and it was time to get rid of a couple of males that were just causing more trouble… so I held the chickens legs and wings while she was bleeding them (ummm, I must here explain the method: it consists of making a cut in the head of the chicken just at the corner of the eye and sticking the knife blade into the skull to reach the carotid artery…)… ugh, that was very unpleasant… well, I was lucky, she was very nice and took care of the feathers and getting rid of the gutts for me…
Seriously though, if I had to do that each time I wanted to eat meat; there is no question that I’d be vegetarian…

Birding in the backyard

Paul in bird-photo action

On the less painful end of things, I am refamiliarizing myself with manual driving since most cars in France are still manual… it’s not making me enjoy driving here though… smaller roads, more turns, smaller streets in town and the added clutch trouble just isn’t all that fun!!
Paul’s experiences are more pleasant I think… he’s been getting used to French cheeses and French wine… it’s not like anything we normally see in Hawaii… on the one hand, the cheese takes some getting used to: it’s smelly, it is also unsanitary by American standards (many are not pasteurized for better taste and more creamy texture)… ah, but so good!! Paul must have tried at least 15 or 20 different kinds of cheese by now and while he looked very suspicious at first, it looks like he’s getting a taste for it! ☺ As for the wine, well, it didn’t take very long for him to get a taste for it… the good thing here is that an average wine bottle is about 5 euros so you do not feel like you’re splurging as much!


For his birthday, we are going to the ocean at Biarritz, for the first time since we arrived in France. It should be still rather chilly since the water is supposed to be about 14°C (57°F) and I may watch from the beach, but we never know, if the weather is really nice, the two wetsuits might do the trick!

Belette, my sister's dog.