Learning to Look at the Landscape.

    Our friend Adriaan Luijk occasionally leads walks through the local countryside. These aren't the usual kind of walks where you stride along clocking up the kilometres. What Adriaan does is really make you look at and analyze your surroundings. (Wander off for a while and read about the fascinating courses he leads: http://regarding-landscapes.com) 
    A couple of Sunday mornings ago, three of us drove to the village of Le Sautel (where we go every September to see the sheep brought down from the mountain--see"transhumance" for applicable posts). There we met up with Adriaan and a friend of his. The day was beyond glorious, the sky like blue porcelain, the sun beating down, fields thick with pink, purple and blue wild flowers, the air almost sparkling. 

    Our first stop was along a small track just beyond the village where we paused to look at a series of dry stone walls that run parallel down the hillside. Small shelters had been built at intervals. What were they used for? Sheep shelters? Were these open-ended pens for various flocks? Turns out, we learned from a local man, that they once housed lepers. 
    Another small digression. Doing some research, I found that the nearby spa town of Ax-les-Thermes originated in the 13th century when the Count of Foix developed its hot springs to give relief to returning crusaders afflicted with leprosy. If you soak your feet in free pool in the town centre, know that it's called Le Bassin des Ladres (the basin of the lepers).
    We got out our sketchbooks--and let me tell you, drawing an object really makes you look at it.

From there, we drove close to the village of Lieurac where Adriaan and Andie, his wife, live. (Andie is a natural dyer who sells the most beautiful yarns for hand-knitting and embroidery. www.renaissancedyeing.com ) A picnic lunch under a tree, more sketching, this time of the view opposite...

... and then a climb up into Lieurac itself with its church at one end and what was once a fort at the other. Set on a south-facing slope, the village blazed with poppies, roses and other flowers, all out earlier this year because of the long hot spell we're still experiencing.
    On the long hot trek back to Le Sautel, we stopped to look at wild orchids, and up at the sky where raptors circled. A man was ploughing so we think the birds were hanging around to snap up hapless field mice.
    What we brought home, beside memories, were sketches and, in my case, seed. As we walked through Lieurac, Andie pointed out what looked like a twiggy necklace of sparsely strung white pearls, seeds of what I'd learned that day is the Purple Gromwell plant. I pocketed some and am waiting for them to sprout.
 

An Impressionist look at the local landscape.

Do you think Monet and Manet looked at the landscape with their lens on its "macro" setting? That's how I created this Impressionist painting effect. 

-----------

     Earlier this week, our local walking group--the Lérandonneurs--met up outside the café, and stood there wondering if it was going to rain seriously or if the drizzle would just fade away. In the end, it did both. 

    First, we headed off on the road up past the chateau, then we made our way into the forest, pausing briefly so that a huge truck, laden with wood, could pass by. Huge truck = huge tyres = huge ruts = huge amounts of clay-ey mud from the rain which, by now, was falling down with enough vigour to make me wish I'd worn Peter's ancient Barbour instead of  a light fleece jacket. Trudge, trudge, slip, slide, walk up on the side of the bank and hang on to what you hope is a non-functioning electric fence.

    But rain stops and, soon the sun came out as on we trudged past fields of forgotten sunflowers, across the little bridge that crosses the river Touyre, and below the walls of the Château de Queille.

Dried sunflowers always remind me of shower-heads.

You'll find much better shots of the Château de Queille on its web site: http://www.queille.net/ 

    I don't think I've ever seen such a gorgeous abundance of wild flowers. Little wild orchids of various kinds, crisp white bachelors' buttons, yellow birdsfoot trefoil and buttercups, dark purple clover, blue speedwell, scarlet poppies, pretty pink wild roses and lots more that I don't know the names of. Anyone know what this little plant is called?

A Walk on the Flat.

    Ten kilometres is nothing when it's all on the flat, the trees are in bloom, the sun is out and there's the prospect of a riverbank picnic at the end of it. 

    Not much to add to these photos except that I've never seen so many cowslips in flower, and that that exquisite village is Camon. 

Summer Slides Towards Fall...

Armed with my big canvas bag and scissors, I roamed the lanes this afternoon in search of wild flowers to refill the vases and jugs. The selection is dwindling. A couple of weeks ago, I could find masses of clover and purple scabious plus several other kinds whose names I don't know. All that's left now is mostly cow parsley, fennel turning to seed and, here and there, other kinds. If anyone can identify them, please do. 

As these summer flowers leave the stage, enter the berries. As I walked and picked, I ate handfuls of mûres--blackberries--which, like blackberries everywhere vary hugely in sweetness and flavour from one bush to another. I also gathered some strands of the scarlet-berried briony that hang like bright necklaces on the hedges. They now have a home along the top of the stove.