Poppies and sawdust

At this time of year, poppies grow everywhere around here, including in and around our yard. Indeed the last few weeks have been a poppy extravaganza. Unfortunately, I didn't get around to taking photos until late in their growing period. So, slightly past their prime but still beautiful, here is the patch that has been lighting up one corner of the yard over the last couple of weeks.

My excuse for not getting out there with my camera is that I was busy producing quantities of wood chips and sawdust ...

milling wood (linden) to make cabinet face frames and doors:

Nancy, meanwhile, has been making tremendous progress on the gardening front, witness the photo below, of the area outside our kitchen door:

Aside from all that activity, which has been preventing us from taking photos and posting more frequent posts on this blog, we have also found time to relax and enjoy friends' company. And in that area, the préau is proving to be the wonderful place that we were hoping it would be. We spent a couple of evenings with friends there recently, talking and drinking wine, while admiring the view early on, and the full moon later on.

So, life continues here at Gaulejac, as we continue to marvel at each season, and keep busy planting, building and generally preparing for our first visitors from Canada and other parts of France. We're looking forward to that, too.

As a post script, I have been meaning to post a photo of a detail that I rather like, an architectural feature that was added several weeks back to some of the downstairs windows: iron bars in the local style, to keep out invaders, I suppose.

Speaking of which, tourist season is now in full swing. Not that you would notice any increase in traffic on our little road. We hope to keep it that way.