Reasons to be Cheerful.........

Today wasn't anything special, just another day. But I feel inspired to show you some of the little things that mean so much to us both, here in France.


Firstly, I was outside cleaning the cat's litter trays last night after 10 o'clock at night, when JJ told me to listen. Amazingly, we could hear young birds still in the nest, calling for food. And they were in our Pigeonier where 'our' owl lives. I got Sue to come outside, and Nadine arrived, and so we all waited for the owl to come out.




JJ and Nadine often see 'her' come out of the top open window of the pigeonier around half past ten, and 'she' dutifully obliged. And we could then still hear the young calling for food! So we all assumed that there are owl chicks in the nest.
Naturally we rushed indoors and went onto the internet to find information on Barn Owls. According to what we found, we think that we have a pair and that the female is on the nest. So there must be a male hunting and bringing food back to the nest. From the information we found, we might see youngsters attempting to fly, roosting outside of the nest, or on the 'sill' of the window.

So 'Owl watching' is going to be a feature of the summer!

The next heart-warming event occurred when I was bring home the new roof tiles from our local Builder's Merchant. (And, yes we even have one of those in our little town). JJ and Claude, a cousin of another of our neighbours, helped me unload the trailer.

The help was given quite naturally, unsolicited, as a normal, neighbourly thing to do.

Finally, as another example of french neighbourliness, Claude, who I had only met this morning, was walking with his little grandson in the garden when he invited Sue and I for an apero. He had no need to, but we saw it as just something that he would naturally do. So, half an hour later, we had to stop our jobs and we went to meet the family. Claude and his wife, his daughter and her husband, and the grandson of three and a half.

We feel very lucky to be here in the middle of all of these little things which add up to make a great life!