As i write this readers i am taking rather large sips from a very big glass of rose, no not because its been a scorching day and rose fits the bill on such a lovely day, but because i need to steady my nerves, why? well on my walk with Barnaby Pickles today we met a rather large snake, arghh…. and for those of you who know me, you know how terrified i am of snakes. We weren’t even in long grass or off the beaten track, we were on the footpath just at the bottom of the hill [in the photo below that Barnaby is featured in surveying his kingdom]. It all happened in a flash, there was a rustle in the barley and something scuttled off so we walked on and then “Le Serpent” literally popped its head out of the barley, Barnaby was about two meters ahead of me and “Le Serpent” was in-between us, i fell over due to the shock of it, it was raised up as they do to make themselves look bigger, it looked at me then Barnaby [who was stood still looking at me as if to say whaaaas up daddy] it then did a little head shake at Barnaby and slithered off into the stream. It was all shades of green, thin but about a meter long. Well you can imagine i was apoplectic, my heart pounding in shock at what at just happened and panicking as i dint know if it had bit Barnaby, although he seemed fine trotted off to sniff something. I checked him over and headed home doing my fasted London must get there walk. I had a rather large glass of something strong and immediately googled “Snakes of South West France” i found a lot of sites which all mostly said the same things, that most of the snakes in France as in the UK are not deadly dangerous apart from a few vipers but even those don’t generally kill you, unless your very old or have medical conditions. The articles went on to say that snakes are very shy and will want to get away from you very quickly, well this one wasn’t that shy it stopped for a look before slithering off. Oh i could go on for ages about it but i won’t bore you all to death, let me get on with the rest of the week but first big glug of rose.
The weather has been stunning as i know it as been in the UK, blue skies, hot, but with some nice cool breezes.
As you can see from the pic below Barnaby has been loving his walks, surveying his kingdom at every opportunity.
Swimming in the dwindling brook, the water level is dropping by the day and soon there will be no swimums for the pickle.
He has even taken to dipping in the pond [near Le Serpent incident] to cool off, there were lots of beautiful dragon flies all mating around this pond but i couldn’t get a photo they were too frantic with pleasure.
The sunflowers are shooting up, or as they call them in France “tournesol” so named because they turn their heads towards the sun.
There are lots of wild vines popping up at the edges of the fields, i say wild but they arnt really as they derive from the cultured vines that used to be in most of the fields surrounding our village, they are mostly all gone now due to overproduction of wine and the government quoters, farmers were made to dig up their vines and plant other crops.
Cherry season is upon us, yummy, the trees near us are heavy with ripening fruit, which are looking rather juicy, it will be rude not to try a few.
We have been busy on our land, mowing, planting, digging, and i also had time to make a table out of some wooden planks i found in the loft.
I hope you have all had a great week with no scary incidents with serpents….
Heres the the new week ahead.
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