Pretty In Purple

It looks purple to me. Maybe it's deep blue, or violet. Whatever you call this color, these guys are blooming all around the vineyards right now. But I think their flower time is nearing its end. Soon the seeds will be set and we won't see the flowers again until next spring.

These resemble bellflower, but they're on a stalk.

It's hard to believe that this is the last day of May. This spring has, so far, been a good one here in our part of France. Except for that nasty cold and rainy week we just had. But Saturday was glorious and today is expected to be very much the same. The week ahead looks pretty nice, too.

So we're back in the yard working, weeding, and otherwise whiling away the hours. Which is kind of a pain because I'm also spending time in front of the tv watching French Open tennis. Fourth round play, les huitièmes de finale, gets under way today!

Identify This And Win...

...my gratitude. That is all. I am not a wealthy man. But I am rich beyond belief, because I get to see stuff like this almost daily:

Do you recognize these?

There are many of these out in the vineyard, but I've never known what they are. I know one or two of you out there will know, or will at least be able to point me in the right direction.

Spring in the vineyard is an amazing time. So is Fall. Winter and Summer are great, too. There's always so much to see. Most of the time you have to look closely, but that's the sport. To spend time in a seemingly static environment and notice all the change that constantly happens.

It ain't Times Square or Les Halles, but it does have it's own brand of excitement. No, really, it does.

Adaptive Re-Use

This is not exactly how the phrase was used back in my urban planning days, but it's the same concept. These wooden posts were formerly used to support the wires that hold up grape-laden vines out in the vineyard. As the posts rot over time, they're pulled out and replaced.

Old posts as bridges.

Often the old posts go home with the growers and end up (I presume) in the fireplace. But this year I noticed that they're being used as little bridges to help the tractors cross the drainage ditches alongside the road.

Pretty cool, huh? Well, I thought so.

An Orky Day

Well, I mean une orchidée, or an orchid. There are many varieties of wild orchid growing all around us here in central France. We have some in our yard, but mostly they grow out in meadows, and along roadsides and streams.

The greater butterfly orchid. I think.

This is one that I recognized from Susan's recent post about orchids at Days on the Claise. She and Simon are wild orchid experts and seek them out every year. Here's a bit more info about this particular orchid on their Loire Valley Nature site.

It is either une platanthère verdâtre (platanthera chlorantha) or une platanthère à deux feuilles (platanthera bifolia). Apparently the two varieties are easily confused. I'm not enough of an expert to know which variety this one is, but I suspect it's the former.

A closer shot of the flower heads.

This patch grows in a small field up among the vineyards. The field is in a flat spot of land that probably holds enough moisture to please the orchids. That's where I was able to photograph these specimens. There were about ten or twelve distinct plants, if I remember correctly.

Pink Roses

Just thought I'd share a picture of some of our roses. These were already here when we bought the house back in 2003 and they're still going strong. There are at least four of the same rose in different locations around the house.

A close-up, kind of blurry.

Every winter I trim them down, so all the growth you see is this year's. I'm not sure I know how to prune them correctly, so I just do what I do. It doesn't seem to matter since they flower every year just fine. And if I'm good about dead-heading them, we get about three blooms a year right on into December (if it doesn't get too cold).

Rose bush with chair.

We have some red roses, too, but they're not in a good place and haven't looked very good for a few years. I think we'll try to relocate them one of these days. In between all of the other chores we have on the list. There is always too much yard work to do!

This one's a little darker than the others.

Not Callie's Paw

There are many dogs who get walked through the vineyard depending on the day and the time of day. There are even some dogs who hang out while their masters work on the vines. Sometimes we meet them, sometimes we try to avoid them. It depends on the dogs in question.

It's been quite muddy lately, so there are lots of prints.

Callie's pretty good with other dogs. She really likes to run and play. She is a submissive girl, having been the runt of her litter, and is rarely aggressive. And she's become very good at coming when I call her to leave the dogs and continue on our way. Most of the time.

The evidence of other dogs is always out there, of course. Some of it is visual, like this paw print from a much larger dog than Callie. Other evidence is invisible, like all the smells that Callie seeks out during her walks.

My favorite time to walk is first thing in the morning. There's rarely anybody about, and we often see roe deer or hares, and sometimes get to chase them.

In other animal news, a bird crashed into one of our windows on Monday morning. I was sitting at the computer, and BAM! I looked up to see a small cloud of feathers outside the window, like you'd see in a cartoon. Then I got up, opened the window and looked on the ground. The poor thing was down there, twitching, with its head curled under its body.

I thought that maybe it had broken its neck. I decided to leave it for the moment since it was still alive, and putting it out of its misery didn't appeal to me much. I checked every now and then over the next couple of hours. At one point it was holding its head up and looked up at me when I opened the window (so its neck wasn't broken), and the next time I looked it had gone.

I'm thinking that it was seriously stunned, but not fatally injured.

Am I Blue?

During our walk on Thursday we saw many little butterflies flitting from place to place. Are butterflies the only things that "flit," I wonder? Surely not. This little blue one stopped flitting long enough for me to take three images before it moved on.

Am I blue? You'd be, too, if each plan with your man done fell through.

Of course, only one of the pictures came out; the others are blurry. Another reason to take several shots in a row while you can! And I have no idea what the name of this little critter is, nor what it looks like in its caterpillar stage. But it's pretty nonetheless.