Rainy Day in Cotignac

It’s a rainy afternoon in Cotignac so this is a good time for a short blog. The weather has been great for the last week – sunny and warm afternoons, cool evenings. We can deal with a little rain today. Besides, it keeps the flowers and the streams flowing.

The flowers are lovely. Iris – dark purple, pale lavender and light yellows – poppies, lilacs, wisteria, and these lovely yellow vining flowers are all over the village and in our yard. It’s beautiful. I picked some lilacs and they perfumed the entire first floor.

Since we’re going to be here for awhile we’d like to introduce you to the people we meet around town. We’ll start with Andre – the pool guy. Andre and his helper, Tio, arrived this week to uncover and clean the pool for the summer. The pool looks great! Unfortunately, the temperature is 65 degrees! Don’t think we’ll be jumping in anytime soon.

Mike and I have continued our afternoon walks around the area. We enjoyed one beautiful walk along the top of the hills that went by a pretty natural spring (source St. Martin) and an old (1700s) glaciere or ice house. The best I could decipher from the description, the spring water flowed into the glaciere and on cold nights the water would freeze into thick ice that was sold in the village. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

We also hiked to a waterfall outside of Sillians. It was also a lovely walk. The trail went to the base of the waterfall and along the stream. The stream had a series of falls along the pathway. We found a big, sunny rock for a little nap. While I napped, Mike was entertained. First, a duck came bravely swimming down the stream. We couldn’t imagine what he’d do at the little fall – go tumbling down? He seemed completely unconcerned and for good reason. He swam to the top of the fall, stood up, walked down the rocks part of the way and jumped to the bottom to continue swimming. Mike captured it all on video. After the duck, two women and a man came over and settled on the same rock. While Mike sat and I slept, the two women calmly undressed and changed into swim suits…..all in front of Mike. He did NOT get a video of that….at least as far as I know.

Mike’s brother and sister-in-law, David and Bernadette, arrive tomorrow – our first guests! We’re looking forward to seeing them and exploring some other areas around Cotignac. We went shopping today so that we’d have some yummy munchies when they arrive after the long flight. That’s when we discovered that May 1 is a national holiday in France. Who knew? It’s Labor Day. It seems that the US is one of a few countries who celebrate Labor Day in the fall rather than on May 1. Everything was closed – except the outdoor markets. We were successful at getting munchies but they’ll have to wait a day for milk!



PS: The laptop crisis is over. Yeah! The local computer guy, Joe, was able to retrieve all our files. We have them all – fully backed up this time. In addition, he fixed the computer! While Dell had already sent the new hard drive, Dell was unconcerned with the loss of all our software and data. We weren’t sure how we’d replace much of it. Since Joe fixed the laptop and cleaned up old files and programs, it’s running better than ever now. We are once again a two computer household. Good thing. That could have gotten ugly!