state of things in Couze

Went to make an appointment to get my hair cut down in Couze this morning--same lady who has cut it before, name is Joelle, but I think she's only cut it twice...so she asked me my name, after we settled on a time and day. I told her and started spelling it (Crowley is not exactly a common name in France, is it...) and she suddenly knew how to spell it. I commented...she said ah, yes, you're the American who lives up at the top of the hill... This is of course true, so we had a bit of a discussion about everybody in a small town like Couze knows who EVERYBODY is as well as WHAT EVERYBODY DOES, what with Couze having 600 or 800 inhabitants...you'd think I was back in Goliad.

This afternoon when I checked, it was HOTTER in Lexington than in Goliad (in the unlikely event you don't know where this is, it's in SOUTH TEXAS, and Lexington is in KENTUCKY). This after a spring in Kentucky that was unbelievably wet and cold, set records all over the place, even broke the ones from last year. And now it threatens to be hot and a drought this summer like it was last year (in Kentucky, that is).

It's been rather a drought in Couze (SW France, overlooking the Dordogne) this spring. They hadn't had rain for two months until about two or three days ago. The trees and all that seem to be basically okay, but the hay, grass, etc. has taken a beating. P thinks that the actual grass in our garden ("yard", such as it is, to you Americans) may have actually died because of the drought. Despite the recent rain,, it sorta shows no signs of coming back.

Ought to be good (at least temporarily) for the wine industry over here, if it's hot, that is. Not good for me; there's basically no AC anywhere, and the AC in that car we leased is sorta seriously lousy, by American standards, at least. So there...

On other fronts, instead of yet another magazine or book about food at the newsagent when I bought today's IHT, I went exploring and ended up with some yarn to make yet another hat for Sarah's offspring, this ball of yarn sort of pink-ish/rose-ish/ivory/taupe, which Phil says looks "girl-ish". I said it doesn't look prissy girl-ish. We have yet to see if it actually turns into a usable hat. Knitting needles over here are INCREDIBLY long, and the sizes are in mm rather American numbers, and I'm working from American patterns...who knows what will happen?!? and they call yarn "laine" which means "wool", which is what they call the stuff in Britain. So I am at least learning stuff.

Photos and more stuff later...

Cheers, Lillie