June? Really?

Not sure how that happened. And look at this! 

I know, I know, another sky picture from the crazy, sun-deprived, pseudo-French girl. That's what happens when the lack of sunshine and cloudless skies gets to you. When you finally see them, you take pictures to immortalize the moment. I have to add here that I am thrilled we live so far out of Paris, so that blue skies are actually blue and not gray from smog. For those of you who aren't quite so underprivileged in the blue sky department, let me just continue on here with my excuses of our busy-ness that has prevented me from blogging in the past while. Perhaps the plethora of pictures will make you forget about that time lapse.

.........GARDEN NEWS......... 

 

Our carrots are coming up!

Our lettuce is growing. Two of them have been eaten by worms... we're waiting to see if the rest will survive until we can eat them or not. It turns out snap peas grow to be really tall. We didn't realize that. So my mother-in-law added some homegrown trellises for them to grow in and around so they don't just fall over. Frédéric removed three more laurel bushes. (Witness the brown spots where there is no grass.) Only two more to go! He also cleaned up under the non-carport, which took a lot of doing as it involved first dejunking, and then powerwashing it, so we could once again appreciate the RED bricks (who knew they weren't dirt-colored?). And some of our calendula in the retaining wall.

.........KID NEWS.........

I'm not really sure if this should go in garden news or kid news, but a couple of weeks ago, I let Benjamin play outside a few minutes longer when Noah and I went inside. He came inside to tell me he had moved a plant. I wasn't sure what he was talking about, so I went outside to look... and found that he had transplanted the orange zucchini plant, roots and all, from one corner of its square to the other. The leaves didn't survive the transplant, but to his credit, the zucchini plant is now doing just fine (on top of the green beans). I guess he has a greener thumb than I do. He did not get in trouble for that - after all, Frédéric did plant them in the square that had been originally designated the kids' garden - but I did strongly encourage him to ask permission before transplanting anything else! Benjamin still has a whole month left of preschool. They get more frequent and longer breaks during the year, but only two months for summer. Noah and Benjamin both like to pick the pretty flowers from the yard for me. I could dream of a beautiful green manicured lawn... but then who would bring me flowers? It got up to 81°F today (wow! We are melting!) so we did this:

The water in our village comes from a well, which means that it is still positively freezing when it's 81° outside, so they only lasted about 20 or 30 minutes in the water before I made them get out to take a bath to warm up. And when I say them, I really mean Benjamin, because when we tried to put Noah in the water, he'd pull his legs up and not go in. He did go in a time or two but got back out immediately, and preferred to splash around the side. 

.........OTHER STUFF.........

  This morning, I washed and oiled our patio furniture (lawn furniture in this case) in preparation for our lunch tomorrow with some of Frédéric's cousins and a coworker and his family. It didn't sound like that many people until I started counting, and realized there would be 14 of us. And this is how I know I live in France: We invite people over for lunch, and one of our guests feels obligated to tell us he and his girlfriend will have to leave by 6:30 pm. Last time we had people over for a real French lunch, everyone left about 9 pm, so this is actually a reasonable thing to let your host know ahead of time.

And of course amid all of this activity, we've also been working as usual. Whew! An update that long ought to hold you over for at least three weeks now, right?