Wildlife Here in the Brenne, in the Land of the Lakes

I thought I'd take a welcome break from coughing up stone dust (kicked up by these admittedly minor renovations as some of these houses go), and share a few nature photographs taken by Peter Street

And We're Off...

The much anticipated (and arguably equally dreaded) renovation work has begun.

No Water Shortage Here

Going back to when I first returned home from Portugal, it was two days before my birthday.

No sooner than I had gotten in the door and turned the water back on, I discovered that my neighbors hadn't exaggerated when they said we'd had an extraordinary, truly unheard of cold spell during my absence, several straight weeks of temps getting down to -17C/2F.

A Day in the Life of...

Well, it's easily three months since I bid adieu to Portugal (and apparently my good intentions to update this blog weekly.) But it has been a relatively busy three months.

Several people have asked me over the past months (okay, it might be past years) to describe what a typical day is for me here in France. I've hesitate simply because when you work from home like I do, it's not terribly exciting. I mean, the work can be exciting for me but hardly bears up in the telling.

But just before I'd left for Portugal this past January, I'd sent what was intended to be a quick synopsis to a friend here on evening who'd asked how my day had gone:

Adeus a Portugal; Bonjour encore, la France

Our six weeks in the western end of the Algarve in Portugal just flew by, one glorious day after another where I more often than not sat inside working instead of enjoying the sun but was still happy to be there. We did take the occasional walks together on the beach, my friend and I and our brother-and-sister dogs. The promised heated pool never materialized, sadly, as there had been a cold spell when we first arrived and they just couldn’t get it up to temperature fast enough to make it cost-effective—we were only paying to heat it once it got up to the promised temp, which it never did, despite trying for about 10 days. Still, that didn't stop us from sitting around it, soaking up the sun during the warm afternoons.

Bienvenue à Portugal

God has a sense of humor. Or at least He has a way of drawing contrasts in order to amplify our appreciation of certain creature comforts that we may have been taking for granted.

Saturday morning, my friend and I packed the car with our suitcases and the dogs and began our seven-week sojourn with a four-day amble down to the southwest corner of the Algarve in Portugal, spending our first two nights at Saint-Jean-de-Luz, by Biarritz, followed by another overnight seven or so hours south of that, before arriving here in Lagos yesterday evening.

La Nouvelle Année the French Way

This year I received what I've been told is an inordinate honor — an invitation to spend New Year's Eve at the home of a French family over dinner. Even to be invited for simple aperitifs on any given day is an honor if you're a foreigner (or ex-pat, as the Brits prefer to refer to themselves) but a formal holiday?

Joyeux Noël

This is why I don't make New Year's resolutions. I not all that long ago resolved to maintain my blog weekly (what was I thinking?) and yet here it is about six weeks since the last post and two months before that. This is why my New Year's resolutions typically boil down to one: don't make any New Year's resolutions (particularly after a glass or two of Champagne).