All this will pass

We have come to the end of our summer visitor season, and I have managed to keep our Rose Walk Pergola standing.  Since early summer I saw that the foot of one of the uprights had disintegrated.

So, this feature of the garden has been rethought and now, it has to come down.

I started on it this morning, really to see how difficult it was going to be.  I feel that it must have been standing up by willpower!  I have taken down the first pair of uprights, lifted the first set of roses and taken out the 'feet' ... the uprights certainly weren't going to blow over!

Unfortunately we are going to be busy over the next couple of weeks but I'm hoping to be able to clear the site soon so that we can redevelop this area of the garden.

We have had the Rose Walk for about 10 years now but it has never been as successful as we had hoped ... the roses didn't really flourish.

RAIN !

At last we have rain ... and the head gardener is very pleased.  After only 2 days of rain, already the world is greening up.

Too late for some of the trees but our 'Autumn Blaze' is doing what it should.

The Heritage Weekend

This weekend in France and across Europe each nation is celebrating it's heritage (culture, architecture, history) for 'Les journées européennes du patrimoine' and properties which are normally closed open their doors to the public.  We are spoilt for choice with visits possible all around us but, as the weather forecast said rain on Sunday, we decided to visit a nearby Château on Saturday afternoon.  It was a pleasant drive through wooded valleys but ... about 2 km from our destination we found we could go no further!

We had had strong winds all morning and this was the result.  Curiously, we had just turned round and were heading back when we saw our neighbours Jean-Jaques and Nadine approaching so we were able to stop them and warn them of the blocked road!  We were fortunate in choosing our detour as it ended up in the village we were heading to and to the Château de Cabrerets.

The Château is perched on a cliff edge some 30 metres above the river Célé.  The original building was started in the 13th century, then added to in the 16th and 17th centuries.  The château is privately owned but, as a historic monument is is required to be open to the public for this weekend.  We realised that it was the owner who acted as our guide for the first part of the tour, but then his grand-daughter took over.
We had thought that our translating duties would be over once our English friends had gone but we found ourselves with a Dutch couple who wanted the guide to speak more slowly!  However as the grand-daughter was about 20 this was obviously impossible for her so Sue or I were translating into English (all Dutch people speak English!!!)

At the end of the tour we then wandered in the grounds ...

... and we were staggered by the profusion of Cyclamen in flower.

Sue reports that we have 2 cyclamen growing under a tree in the alley so maybe in some 2 or 3 hundred years we may have something like this.

Tourist Season

For the past couple of weeks we have been hosting friends.  Pat and Mel (my cousin) came for 4 days and we took them to an obligatory Plant Fair as well as dragging them along to our Garden Club meeting in a member's garden.
We then did a meal for friends with their friends, followed by a visit to a restaurant to meet up with a couple from England who follow this blog!
We reached the peak of the season last week when we had friends from Birmingham arrive on Tuesday.  However the garden needs had to be met and they helped us on Wednesday morning by rushing off to Lidl to buy 120 Pansies at a very keen price!  We were joined Wednesday evening by friends from Edinburgh ... the start of a lovely period of 'social drinking', long meals and stimulating conversations.
Thursday we had lunch in a restaurant in Cahors before going on a 2 hour guided tour of the medieval part of the city.

Our guide spoke English, although he wasn't 100% fluent, but he was very knowledgeable ... we saw the Roman ruins uncovered in the building of an underground carpark, explored the narrow medieval streets, the Bishop's 'palace', the cloisters and then finally the Cathedral, which this year is celebrating 900 years since it's founding.

Friday morning was recovery but in the afternoon we all went to the 'Grottes de Cougnac' near Gourdon for a guided tour of two caves; the first a splendid display of Stalactites and ...mites, the second containing prehistoric wall paintings ... enjoyable since the tour group was not too large, the caves are also not too large, and the guide spoke in English (just as well as she spoke very quickly and giving a lot of information, which made our efforts at translating for our friends a bit touch and go!)

Our friends all left on Saturday morning so we were able to 'chill' for the rest of the day and abstemiously go to bed early.

The answer lies in the soil

Every two years the Young Farmers of the Lot hold a weekend show with demonstrations, old tractors, cattle judging and lots of other attractions and trade stands.  We went yesterday (the second time we've been) as we really like seeing the cattle and listening to the judge's explanations as to what they are looking for.  We were also impressed with the demonstration of an Australian piece of equipment that was able to hold a sheep and turn it upside down so that the shepherd could inspect the sheep's feet (in Australia they use it to shear around their tails to prevent parasites).

It was interesting to see a demonstration of an old threshing/baling machine.  It wasn't roped off to the public and so people were able to get quite close to huge drive belts flapping around at speed.  Wouldn't be allowed in the UK !!

But our highlight was watching the cattle being judged .. with all ages parading them .. from about 3 years old!

The farming community is a total world of its own.