Friday 8 June 2012

A Flavour of France

I recently spent a week in France with a friend at her house, the 2nd time I had been there. The nearest town is Thenon, NE of Bergerac.
 It was a wonderful week of relaxation, walking, wild flower spotting, sketching, reading, eating and drinking - what could be better than sitting on a terrace over looking the fields and woods, glass of wine in hand watching a  deer in the field below and listening to the birds. Luckily the sun shone all week, such a pleasure compared to our current weather. Lots of lizards around, they liked garlic sausage!
Birds we heard included owls, nightingales and orioles; we saw lots of kites, buzzards, jays and green and spotted woodpeckers as well as more usual chaffinches and blackbirds. There were masses of wild flowers, as the small farms with animals are left empty. This is dropwort.
Meadow clary (sage family),
pyramid orchids all round the house,
lesser butterfly orchid on the grass verge
and a man orchid.
This unusal plant we identified as Bath asparagus, it was nearly 3 ft. tall.
We sat by this lake not far from the house one lunchtime with a cold beer in hand.
We visited a fabulous garden, Marquessac near Beynac, mainly topiary with great views of the River Dordogne in the valley below.

Beynac is a delightful place,
 I enjoyed walking round Bergerac again.
This sums up France to me, poppies
and walnut trees.
Happy memories as I wrap up here with an extra cardigan....
.......cheers!


3 comments:

  1. Anna, that stunning topiary garden was on Gardener's World earlier this year and I searched for more online photos at the time because I love gardens with strong structure to them, but I equally love wild, floppy gardens and so the pictures of the wild flowers are gorgeous. A whole week sketching etc sounds a dream holiday. I shall look forward to seeing the prints that might develop from all this inspiration!

    ReplyDelete
  2. It looks blissful. We've got a week in the Dordogne next week so hoping it is as inspiring and relaxing as yours!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Lovely photo record of your trip I can feel the sun from here!

    ReplyDelete

Thankyou for leaving a comment, I enjoy reading them. You don't need to have a blog to leave a comment, you can select the name/URL option and fill in just your name instead of a blog link.