It is that time of year when we throw open the kitchen window all day to encourage a cool breeze from the north. It also brings the flowers in the window boxes indoors and the Oleanders around the church.

Oleander Triumphant !

Our Oleander having hidden its light for many years under the shadow of the Chinaberry Tree now has emerged triumphant into the sunlight with its demise, displaying its charms to the heavens.
( Even the normally demure Plumbago, on the south wall, seems to be enjoying the vanquishing of the tree too )

BTW I have been plagued by Spam Comments lately so have switched off my comments for the moment- send a comment to me directly or via facebook.

My Mum and Dad, appropriatly, pictured in a restaurant in London in the ’50s when they were in their 40’s.
Dad died in ’90 when 75 years old, he should have lived longer so I could get to know him better.

Shot taken by daughter Eileen of the Cimtiere in Thezan with the various shades of hill behind.

Written in the visitors book this morning :

“”A house that wraps itself around you, and food to warm the heart ”

They arrived strangers a week ago , departed friends.

And so, macerating gently away, are two five litre buckets of Vin de Noix, one a mixture of shop Alcohol, Crushed Green Walnuts, Red St. Chinian and Sugar and exactly the same in the other except the alcohol was bottled in 1940, nine years before I was born, and had already yielded about one quarter to the angels.

Still it was with true humility that I pulled the cork, it did resist slightly but then slid out, really astounding that the person who had handled it last and hammered it home did so 74 years ago.

Maruration is forty days until the 21st July….. If I last…….

Our friends Anne-Marie and Patrick were for dinner last week and they brought a present of a bottle.

Anne-Marie’s family had owned a vinyard in the village until the middle of the last century when they had sold on the land.
She had inherited the old house which had the cave in the cellar.
This has remained untouched for the last 50 + years and is a bit of a time capsule, every so often they find a treasure there and this was one they gave to me, knowing my propensity for making up various fruit (and nut) “alcools”.

The bottle is labelled “Alcool 92% 1940”. I really had no option with this but to make up some Vin de Noix, especially as the Walnuts were just now in their perfect state of green under-ripeness.

I will let you know how it goes.

I bought this little glass bottle about 15 or 20 years ago here in France. The seller told me that it was a special bottle for watering caged birds. Well it has moved about with me since then but I never thought to question it until today. It is, in fact, a fiendishly clever device. If you fill the tower bit with water and turn it right way up, then the little bowl in the bottom fills with water but doesn’t spill over, it only fills by the amount extracted, as in sipped out by the bird.
Ingenious !
Now my question is how in the name of all that’s good and holy does it manage to do this? I have no idea but the vaguest notion that it was something I did know long long ago when I studied science in school. Answers please.