Spring here is bursting with colours and exuberance and glee. The rains and the heat have done a good job, we have plenty of work. Everything breathes abundance!

The vegetable garden is almost ready, we are working hard on it. The seedlings have been successful and we have a surplus of everything: tomatoes, peppers, aubergines, lettuces, beans…everything is growing with breath-taking speed.

Under the greenhouse the lemon trees are beautiful.

The orchard is over run with wild flowers and grass and none the worse for it. Just a few days pushing the mower for me. Oh ! the cistus are in bloom! I saw the artichokes pushing their tight round heads above the grass. Already ? Strawberries are hiding but I am watching them. As soon as they turn red, slugs and snails will be inviting themselves for sure…

On the lavender path, the rosemary is finishing flowering and the sage has just started. Around the vegetable garden the santolina and the cotoneasters are almost ready. Every year it’s a surprise: who will bloom first?

The yellow irises are in bloom in the small tank overlooking the larger pond which is now waiting for water lilies and Domi has come to bring us a few, Oh, joy! she left with a crate of tomato plants. Michel is coming by this morning also for tomatoes.

On the Solo side, it’s another story. For a year now we had organized our life to make him the most pleasant place possible with us but it seems that something essential was missing. Last week, suddenly he became mean. Before now, his aggression was directed at the builder and male visitors. But then the target became me. They were frightening frontal attacks targeting my thighs as well as from behind aiming at my ankles, I could not go out without apprehension. It was unbearable.

We had to take a decision quickly and so we put him in the guinea-house with two small lady-guinea fowls bought pronto to try to give him back the life of a guinea. The little ones are in a terrible state, but we hope they will recover with us. For the moment it’s going pretty well, I don’t hear him calling… or may be just a little. Do we dare dream that it was simply the company of his peers that he missed?

Since Solo’s descent to the guinea pen, our house has come back to life: the doors and windows remain open all day without worrying about finding a smelly poop to clean up here or there, and the cats have regained their independence.

 With these beautiful warm days, meals are again outside. And in the chestnut tree overlooking the balcony, here, just a few meters away from our table, oh wonder, two baby pigeons were born yesterday. Not a sound, not a chirp, just a pretty mum with her white collar sitting silently on the edge of her nest, attentive to the two little beaks popping out…Geoff tells me pigeons feed their young with a cereal milk which they regurgitate at regular intervals, I had no idea. Lunch on the balcony side by side with this little feathered family is another delight, we observe each other peacefully.

 May the peace last.