Blue Skies, Black Berries

We took some time off in August, partly planned (a week with the family near Aix-en-Provence in...er...Provence) followed by more than a week unplanned due to the internet box fizzling out when we turned it on after the week away! So with no internet and no telephone, all on-line business was taken care of on the laptop at a local burger place with a free wifi hotspot! But we only drank coffee...well, almost...

So yesterday we'd planned to get back to work. It was a Monday and as the village kids will be going back to school later this week, it seemed like the right time to get back into the swing of things. Our own personal, grown-up version of "back to school"!

However, from Sunday to Monday, the weather changed from pleasantly warm to unbelievably hot. And as it was only due to last for one single day (for once the forecast was right; it has rained nearly all day today...) we decided to avoid cooping ourselves up in the workshop and instead have a wander around the village, taking a path we'd never taken before.

We also kept an eye open in the hope that we'd stumble across some blackberry brambles...

We took the back road out of the village past the farm and the gîte.

The lack of recent rain was soon evident!

Apart from good old dirt, there was nothing in the near fields

And nothing in the sky...

...apart from the aeroplanes flying in and out of Charles de Gaulle - were they leaving or arriving? The unobscured view from up there must have been amazing.

We usually turn here to take another path around the village, so this tree marks the furthest we'd ever been in this direction and Emmaflam bravely passes it without flinching!

We head out past cornfields

And past fields of sugar beet

Then all of a sudden...nothing on the horizon! Until we reach the crest and...

...hurrah! A blackberry bush!

There were lots ready for picking...

...and even the "escargots" got in on the act! Would they have a blackberry flavour too...?

We didn't try...!

We returned with nearly a kilo of blackberries from just this one small bush. No doubt we'll be off again the next dry day we get...

They were put to good use as soon as we returned home. Blackberry jam...

...which was spread on a slice of brioche for breakfast this morning! Yummy!

We couldn't let a post like this go by without featuring a miniature somewhere, and of course there's a blackberry or two on it!

And here's the same piece with some of yesterday's harvest.

So in the end, the fact that you're reading this means that today is the day we finally get back to work!