VERY VERY YELLOW (Languedoc)

Spring in St.Pons, as per usual the cherry blossom was stunning, but this time I was really struck by how unbelievably, intensely yellow the forsythia (and also rape seed) was.

The picture below is the view from our bedroom window. In the distance is the St. Pons tourist office, the building on the right is the presbytery, beside it there used to be a great little restaurant which unfortunately changed hands and then closed down due to miss management I guess, (even the magic cooking pot all the way from the Jura couldn't help the new chef/patron - but that's another story). Then round the corner are our vegetable shop and supermarket so we are really very close to the town centre. Most people buying property in France head to the depths of the countryside but with found memories of my Grandparents home slap bang in the middle of Bushmills' Main street I had always wanted a house where you walked out the front door into small town bustle (didn't quite succeed, bit of a garden in the way).

The forsythia and cherry are in the garden of a little old man we always talked of as 'Hiram', we didn't know his name so used the name of the house, Hiram's vegetable garden is spectacular.

It seemed very odd when every plot around and about the town was hotbed of activity as the good folk tilled and planted and Hiram hadn't started into his, with my usual sunny outlook on life I assumed Hiram was dead, possibly confirmed by the fact a name had appeared on his post box (as is a usual French custom) and it was the name of a couple and children. So there won't be serried ranks of lettuce, beans, artichokes and potatoes to inspect on my daily walk past to the shops anymore, the new residents are letting the vegetable patch go to rack and ruin, Hiram would be turning in his grave, but for the fact he isn't actually dead. At a later date he was sighted on the benches underneath the trees in the square where the old folk collect to chat and watch the world go by of an afternoon, I hope he never dander's up the street and sees his abandoned plot.

One last blaze of colour, at the other end of our street - the dead end - beside the entrance to St. Pon's cemetery.