Tamberlan

Today was glorious. Too glorious to be indoors. It was a day of eating lunch outside in the sun, pruning vines and roses and recording some of the flowers that have emerged around the house now that the flood waters have receded. The plain of the Garonne is now a wetland, dozens of lakes and flocks of egrets. We are in the hilly country out of the flood plain, but with our own little watercourses that flood just the same.

The migrating birds are back, the cranes and geese flying north, and the hoopoes and golden orioles come back to nest. The air is full of the songs of thrushes, blackbirds and the wild cackle of woodpeckers. The mud down where the stream flooded is pocked with the tracks of badgers, wild boar, roe deer and foxes. We startled a hare and watched a red squirrel showing off, leaping from tree to tree along the stream.

love this place, these meadows and trees, this house. They have shown me what is important, what life means.