Actually I would spell it estival rather than aestival, but I think the American spell checker objects! Whatever, April and the first couple of days of May have been a wonderful foretaste of what summer should be like, but wasn't last year. We wait to see how this summer pans out - I have little faith in the long term forecasts peddled by the tabloids.
We started the week with aperos in the garden with our elderly cat, and on Friday had a book signing on the pub terrace with a renowned Anglophone historian and writer (click on the Eighty Years Ago this Week link on the right of the screen when you have finished reading this for more information about Adrian Phillips, author of, among other titles, Winston's Bandits, the book being signed here). What a week!
In between, there have been markets, a bank holiday with picnic, a final afternoon at the Mairie making paper flowers, and an extremely hot and sticky session in the Comité des Fêtes's hangar, taking down last year's cabin structure and building the new frame for this year's tableau - very hush, hush for the moment.
The natural flowers are an absolute joy this year. At the bottom of one of our downpipes we always have a good display of campanula growing out of the wall and a bit of tarmac, but this year is the best ever I think. They should keep going for another week or so.
The peas I sowed in pots to keep them away from marauding mice all came up and those have now been planted into the vegetable beds, with columns of sheep netting to climb up. The last three days have seen all of them pull away gratifyingly and I am hoping for tasty snacks of extremely fresh peas in early June.
Down among the ponds, there is one place where there is a large bank of wild marsh iris, and we have the best ever display we've seen of flowers on them at the moment. Soon the other foliage will completely block the view of them for the rest of the summer season.
The unseasonably hot weather brought on the flowers on the false acacia rather more quickly than usual - I hope this doesn't adversely affect the honey harvest. The trees themselves are awful - covered in sharp thorns, they spread by suckering and are a non-native invasive species, practically impossible to get rid of. But for a couple of weeks in May or June they are coated in tumbling white flowers with a heady, honey scent, which makes them borderline tolerable.
The favourite orchid featured last week continues to flower beautifully despite being mugged by surrounding oxeye daisies, linseed and various meadow grasses. While I tried to bash my way through to my favourite cultivated irises, I found a second example of the orchid, possibly more spectacular than the first. Well, see what you think!
The weather has changed in time for the UK bank holiday. We have another ourselves on Thursday, with Victory in Europe day, which will be full of reminders of the end of the Second World War. Sadly it seems we are gearing up for the Third World War, but I will not pursue that line of thinking, this week anyway.
Have a good week!
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