Birdsong

After apéritifs last night, we went and found a couple of Pierres at the hippy builders' bar further up the Prom.  Regular readers will be astonished to learn that the work on the west wall of the house is still not finished.  La semaine prochaine, we're told.  Don't hold yer breath.

As I type, we're being serenaded by a blue tit.  Don't think we've seen any hereabouts before: the predominant species are house martins, swifts and swallows.  But a nightingale accompanied my insomniac hours today, followed by a black redstart, I think, and a cuckoo. Of the wingless residents and visitors, we've seen painter Josef, Julia and Les, Ann and Chris and Mary and John, these last once resident and briefly visiting again.  Mary's eyesight no longer allows her to paint, and she passed a lot of paints to Les.  Since he paints in oils, he passed her acrylics on to me, including the only green I don't mix from primaries, green gold.

The countryside is pretty at this time of year.  We're too late for the mimosa, the tiny daffodils and dwarf irises.  But the trees are still a riot of different greens, and the roadsides are carpeted with flowers.  The broom is at its peak (sneeze, sniffle), and there are fields of aphyllanthes that almost look like ponds reflecting the sky.  Lovely thing.  The ciste cotonneux (cistus albidus) is in flower everywhere, as are hundreds of Judas trees, lilacs and purple irises.  Back at Forges-l'Evêque, the Judas tree grown in Hull from a seed from a garden in Lagrasse is alive but not blooming yet, and the cistus are going to be quite a while, given the savaging I gave them a few weeks ago.  Here in Another Place, we have little outdoor space, but the patch to the right of the door is is full of periwinkle, which has responded well to ruthless chopping back last year.  On the other side, in amongst the other weeds, the mint and sage are just about holding their own, but we have a rich collection of uninvited species, including wild veronica and a weed that was somewhat alarmingly known where I come from as sticky willy. 

We shook, rattled and rolled our way to Carcassonne this morning to get some amateur daubing bits, promising ourselves lunch at the airport, watching Mr O'Leary's buses coming and going.  The restaurant overlooking the field turned out to be closed, and the catering is now limited to a snack bar on the ground floor with no view.  The former operators of the restaurant are moving to a site in the unlovely Bouriette industrial estate nearby, and we've no information on the future of the first floor restaurant.  Shame.  Still, Plan B was lunch back here at the café de la Promenade, where the excellent Bertrand continues to preside over the kitchen.  Since the siesta is a mere 5-minute waddle thence, I indulged in a cassoulet.  Very well laced with cuisse de canard confite, belly pork and sausage, it should keep me nourished into the next decade.  So weeding this afternoon seems inadvisable.  It's a bit better than forecast today, but the outlook is not great.  The wet weather programme hereabouts is painting and railway modelling, so I've bought a big canvas and a big brush.  I don't promise to use either, but who knows?