Watery Wednesday

Joining Watery Wednesday this week for the first time

and also

Outdoor Wednesday with A Southern Daydreamer.

I took these shots recently as we walked along the banks of the River Vire in Saint Fromond, a small sleepy Normandy village, typical of this area.

This village is about a 5 minute drive away from our home and we often stop here to take our dogs, Ben & Fleur, for a walk along the river bank en route to Carentan or St Lo.

67 years ago during the invasion of Normandy, as part of the "Avranches breakthrough", this is what was happening in this exact spot.

SAINT-FROMOND/AIREL Manche - 17 km north of Saint-Lô
The 30th Infantry Division seized a bridgehead on the river Vire
At the beginning of July 1944 the battle seemed endless for the Americans in the Norman bocage. On the left wing of the front line they reached the river Vire. On 6 July Airel is liberated. The following day on 7 July American artillery opened fire on the western bank of the river Vire. It is a preliminary to the assault of the 30th Infantry Division under General Hobbs who must cross the river Vire in Saint-Fromond. At 4:20 a. m. boats carried out the first assault wave, then the second under heavy German shelling. Infantry climbed the opposite bank and pushed back a German kampfgruppe. The engineers started to prop up the old stone bridge, and at 12:30 p. m. the first tanks crossed the river; a floating bridge allowed the passage of light vehicles. Saint-Fromond was liberated. North of the town the Americans spanned the canal Vire-Taute in front of Saint-Jean-de-Daye. On 11 July a German counter-attack of the Panzer-Lehr Division failed to drive back the bridgehead.

Source: 1944 The Battle of Normandy - The Memory

 with heartfelt thanks and gratitude

for those who fought for our freedom.

Lest we forget.

Trees and Poetry.

After the spring flowers have faded and become just a distant memory the trees in our garden step forward to delight us with acid green leaves and neon pink and gentle white blossom.

TREES

I think that I shall never see

A poem lovely as a tree

A tree whose hungry mouth is pressed

Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day

And lifts her leafy arms to pray,

A tree that may in summer wear

a nest of robins in her hair

Upon whose blossom snow has lain;

Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems were made by fools like me

But only God can make a tree.

­Joyce Kilmer

The Sound of the Trees

I WONDER about the trees.

Why do we wish to bear

Forever the noise of these

More than another noise

So close to our dwelling place?

We suffer them by the day

Till we lose all measure of pace,

And fixity in our joys,

And acquire a listening air.

They are that talks of going

But never gets away;

And that talks no less for knowing,

As it grows wiser and older,

That now it means to stay.

My feet tug at the floor

And my head sways to my shoulder

Sometimes when I watch trees sway,

From the window or the door.

I shall set forth for somewhere,

I shall make the reckless choice

Some day when they are in voice

And tossing so as to scare

The white clouds over them on.

I shall have less to say, But I shall be gone.--

Robert Frost

cherry blossoms

with the morning moon

still in the sky
(old traditional Haiku translated by Robin Gill)

Trees

Trees just stand around all day

and sun themselves and rest.

They never walk or run away

and surely that is best.

For otherwise how would

  squirrel or robin find its nest?

Aileen Fisher

Many thanks to NC State University for sharing these poems on their website.

Trees of Strength

Please join me over at A Southern Daydreamer and Susan our gracious hostess

for Outdoor Wednesday

click here or on the sidebar button.

Linking also to a new blog that Ricki Jill led me to,

Mamarazzi's Dandelion Wishes 

and

 My Happy List

A Breath of Spring.

For a few hours today we had blue skies and sunshine, a breath of spring gently wafting over the garden.
I mooched around tidying here and there, stopping to take photographs of emerging primroses,crocuses and daffodils and getting dirt under my fingernails.

Bliss!

I'm joining Susan @ A Southern Daydreamer for Outdoor Wednesday
and Kim @ Savvy Southern Style for the very first
Wow Us Wednesdays Party

click on the links, or on the sidebar buttons,

 to see who else is sharing this week.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

That's right, it's snowing in Normandy, last Friday we awoke to a light sprinkling but it started in earnest 2 days ago and hasn't really stopped since.

This is the earliest snowfall in the region that we have experienced in 14 years!

When DH braved the chill night air to take Mr Ben for his night time "tiddle time" on Monday this was the first thing we saw outside the front door. Quite pretty, n'est pas?

Luckily this man had called round that very afternoon, his tractor just managed to squeeze through our gates,

and delivered a great load of fire wood for the sitting room woodburning stove.

On Tuesday morning my potager outside the back door looked like a winter wonderland.

Don't you agree?

I'm linking our first snowfall to Susan @ A Southern Daydreamer and her Outdoor Wednesday gathering today, I wonder who else has had a snow day?

Around and about le Presbytère

For Outdoor Wednesday this week graciously hosted as always by Susan @ A Southern Daydreamer, some snaps taken around and about during the last few days.
One of our wild/tame moorhens finishing off Ben's breakfast this morning.

A perfect looking mushroom growing at the side of the lane, didn't pick it though as I'm unsure which ones are safe to eat. Possibly this one was o.k. but didn't want to risk food poisoning, or worse.
We saw these white cows relaxing in a field, safe behind barbed wire fencing, whilst on our Sunday walk last weekend.

Imagine our surprise as we rounded the bend to find this escapee, who definately knew that the grass was greener on the other side. After snapping him quickly, I beat a hasty retreat.

After many weeks of waiting, finally, red tomatoes! These robust heirloom tomatoes are rich, juicy and full of flavour. Ben, as usual, is never far away.

Now, head over to A Southern Daydreamer to follow Hurricane Earl's progress along the Eastern US coast.

Growing and going green.

It's Outdoor Wednesday where all things green are often celebrated, the Rainbow Summer School is going green too this week.

After the torrential rain we have experienced this past week (ever since I wrote about the Hazy Lazy days, actually) everything in my garden is refreshed, luscious and green, indeed.

How about these gorgeous espaliered apples and pears growing against a usually sunny, ancient stone wall?

In the potager along with the organic fruits and vegetables, some of which I blogged about in last week's Summer School project, I cultivate a few culinary herbs. Tasty green chives, and leaves from my Bay tree enhanced by nature's tears above, and below flat leaf parsley growing right alongside a new crop of dwarf haricot beans.

The Scarlet runner bean crop had been excellent this year, they love the rain it seems, but once again I think there'll be plenty of green tomatoes for frying and making chutney this autumn.

Many thanks to Susan & Jenny for graciously hosting these excellent meme's. Click on the links on my sidebar to see who else is going green this week.

Why bees matter.

For a number of years we have been hearing that honey bees are disappearing and no one knows why.
I've been prompted to look online to see if I can understand why bees are under threat and it seems that the biggest fear is something called Colony Collapse Disorder.
Simply put the worker bees disappear, maybe as a result of a virus or mites and the colony dies.

I found this information on the Guardian Newspaper's website very interesting:
Why bees matter.
"Flowering plants require insects for pollination. The most effective is the honeybee, which pollinates 90 commercial crops worldwide. As well as most fruits and vegetables – including apples, oranges, strawberries, onions and carrots – they pollinate nuts, sunflowers and oil-seed rape. Coffee, soya beans, clovers – like alfafa, which is used for cattle feed – and even cotton are all dependent on honeybee pollination to increase yields."

and the lavender in my potager....................................

Yesterday morning as I did my daily round to see how my garden was growing I was so very pleased to observe these hard working honey bees doing what comes naturally.............thank heavens for bees.

I'm linking to Susan's Outdoor Wednesday meme this week, so head over to A Southern Daydreamer to see what else is going on in the great outdoors.

7:15 a.m. Wednesday View from my bedroom window.

It's Wednesday and there's a whole lot going around here as usual so I'm a little late in linking these early morning shots to Susan's Outdoor Wednesday #74 @ A Southern Daydreamer. Yikes ! I'm # 82!

Susan has some fabulous photos of Harry Potter's Wizarding World in Florida.

You have to go over there and see Hogsmeade, Mr Weasley's Flying Car sitting high up in the Whomping Willow and lots, lots more.

Garden shadow shots.

As I was passing by an upstairs window I noticed the fabulous shadows that the cherry trees already sprinkled with white blossom, the laurel hedge around the potager and the ancient old crab apple tree loaded down with mistletoe, were casting over the back garden.

Grabbing my trusty Lumix I took these shots before heading to the front of the house to see what was happening there.

The huge ornamental cherry which dominates the garden is about to "pop" into glorious pinkness, here and there you can see small flowers appearing, almost on an hourly basis. I was thrilled to see the almost mirror image shadow that this tree was throwing across the lawn.

When we bought this house there were three linden trees growing against the wall. Sadly, over the years, two of them fell victim to gale force winds which brought them crashing down, now only one remains to cast it's shadow across the driveway.

By the way as I sit here blogging I can hear a cuckoo in woods behind the house (first time this year), the house martins returned exhausted after their long flight from Africa at the weekend (I wonder if the volcanic ash slowed them down at all?) to their nests in the eaves of the garage, and everywhere I look the cows are back in the fields. WooHoo!!

I'm linking this post to Outdoor Wednesday graciously hosted by Susan @ A Southern Daydreamer who reminds us in her post that tomorrow April 22nd will be the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day.

At the weekend I'll also link to Shadow Shot Sunday held every week @Hey Harriet's Australian blog.

There's still time to enter my giveaway, the winner's name will be drawn on Saturday 24th April.

Click here if you missed the details.

Water, water everywhere for Outdoor Wednesday.

For Outdoor Wednesday hosted by Susan @ A Southern Daydreamer I thought you might like to see what greeted us when we took our walk last Sunday.

Road flooded!

Remember the bricks in Monday's Mosaic?

The photo above shows that same path, now under water at the far end where the river breached it's banks.

This is the field next to the path.

DH decided we should carry on. "It won't be too bad" he said........................I blame Jeremy Clarkson, and watching too many episodes of Top Gear!
Well, we made it through, just, but to be on the safe side I suggested that after the walk we take another way home. He concurred.

This photo taken from higher, dryer ground shows the road that we just came along. It's that long stretch, from the tree with mistletoe in the centre, that divides the two flooded fields and ends by the lonesome stranded tree. There was a small stream flowing swiftly across the road and the water in the field on the left was higher than the road! How does that work?


Incroyable!

Have a great Wednesday and be sure to visit Susan in sunny Georgia, and all the other participants sharing Outdoor tales today.

Wednesday's sunrise.

For OW & Wordless Wednesday I shared with you yesterday's sunrise, the trouble with Wordless W is that I can't "talk"!
So, to answer some questions from my friends...............
the time was 8.30'ish in the morning, not very early,
it did come with a shepherd's warning because it snowed again later in the day,
it was worth getting out of bed for, except I was already up and preparing breakfast when I looked out of the kitchen door, saw the beautiful colours, grabbed my trusty Lumix and dashed upstairs to take a photo from the bathroom window.
I thought it might be fun to try and replicate the shot 24 hours later but as you can see no blazing sunrise today, only the slightest hint of pink around the edges.
Thanks for all your comments, as Cindy @ Cottage Instincts said recently

" Nothing would ever get done around here if not for an audience".

Have a wonderful day, everyone.

Sunrise in Normandy

For Outdoor Wednesday hosted by Susan @ A Southern Daydreamer
and also Wordless Wednesday a pink Normandy sunrise.