Outdoor Wednesday - Spring has sprung!



Spring lambs with their mums.
4 sets of twins.



Spring flowers in our back garden.
The bees were already hard at work on the white ornamental cherry blossom.

Not too much time available to blog since Mme Fleur arrived at the weekend and Mr Darling Husband flew the coop for a business trip to the UK!

I just had to share some pix, taken on a recent Sunday morning, of the new lambs that Jacques the owner of our village epicerie has in the field next to the shop.

Also some very quick snaps taken in our back garden Tuesday afternoon whilst Fleur & Ben were chasing around like whirling dervishes, bonding over a tennis ball.

All the shots I took of their playtime were too blurred to share but I'm sure you can picture the scene, n'est pas?

Joining Susan for Outdoor Wednesday @ A Southern Daydreamer and Jill @ The French Cupboard for French Inspiration Thursday with this slice of rural Normandy Life.

What a difference 48 hours can make.

The very best of pals

Isn't she lovely?

I believe it was Woody Allen who said
"If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans".
Well, yesterday we hadn't planned on adding to our small family of Mr Ben, Mr B & me but then God laughed and now we are four.
O.K.maybe we were tempting fate by taking a drive over to Caen to visit the Chiot Expo taking place at the large exposition centre.

45 different breeds on show but how likely was it that one of the hundreds of wriggly little furballs, competing for our attention, would capture a heart?

Can you hear God laughing now?

This is our new addition, a female pedigree Berger Allemand a.k.a. German Shepherd a.k.a Alsatian, almost five months old, born on the 14th October 2010.

The breeder had not previously named her that honour went to the new owners, us, and so in keeping with the "one letter per year" system and F being the letter for 2010 we decided to name her Fleur.
Fleur de L'Ange Quentin to be precise!

Getting to know you

Until 1926, there was no rule in France for naming a dog registered in the LOF. From this year, the S.C.C. decided that all dogs born in the same year would have a name beginning with the same letter, which would simplify the work of dog genealogists. The letter "Z" was excluded because one though that the choice of names beginning with this letter was not big enough in French. One should be aware that for several years after, some breeders didn't follow this new rule.

Her Mum's name is Diana and Daddy's is Chips!

The only change to this system happened in 1972, when the Commission Nationale d’Amélioration Génétique (National Committee for Genetic Improvement) decided to standardize the yearly letters for all animals. Five letters (K, Q, W, X, Y) were removed, for the same reason which had lead to the exclusion of "Z" in 1926, and it was decided that "I" would be used for 1973.

Note: with the use of typewriters, the French Kennel Club decided to use only capital letters for dog names, not including accents and special characters. Today it is still the case, and many letters used in French cannot be used for dog names: À, à, Â, â, Æ, æ, Ç, ç, É, é, È, è, Ê, ê, Ë, ë, Î, î, Ï, ï, Ô, ô, Œ, œ, Ù, ù, Û, û, Ü, ü, Ÿ, ÿ.

Coming home yesterday afternoon after checking out the new location

Here is a table summarizing the dogs' names in France since 1926:

1926 A 1936 K 1946 U 1956 F 1966 P 1976 M 1986 B 1996 M 2006 B
1927 B 1937 L 1947 V 1957 G 1967 Q 1977 N 1987 C 1997 N 2007 C
1928 C 1938 N 1948 W 1958 H 1968 R 1978 O 1988 D 1998 O 2008 D
1929 D 1939 M 1949 X 1959 I 1969 S 1979 P 1989 E 1999 P 2009 E
1930 E 1940 O 1950 Y 1960 J 1970 T 1980 R 1990 F 2000 R 2010 F
1931 F 1941 P 1951 A 1961 K 1971 U 1981 S 1991 G 2001 S
1932 G 1942 Q 1952 B 1962 L 1972 V 1982 T 1992 H 2002 T
1933 H 1943 R 1953 C 1963 M 1973 I 1983 U 1993 I 2003 U
1934 I 1944 S 1954 D 1964 N 1974 J 1984 V 1994 J 2004 V
1935 J 1945 T 1955 E 1965 O 1975 L 1985 A 1995 L 2005 A

(Source Braque de Bourbonnais)

New kid on the block

What more can I say, she's beautiful, intelligent, obedient and ours.

Mr Ben meanwhile remains unconvinced
 that this was a good idea!

Joining Mary @the little red house for Mosaic Monday, click here, or on the sidebar button to see who else is participating this week.

1st March. - St. Davids Day.

St. David (Dewi Sant) the patron Saint of Wales was a monk who lived during the sixth century and died circa 588 on March 1st.

Although perhaps not as well known as Irelands Saint Patrick, for centuries the date has been a National Festival in Wales.
As part of the celebration people wear either a leek or a daffodil in their lapels.

National St. Davids Day Parades will take place today in Cardiff and Wrexham in Wales, as well as further afield in China and New York!

Apparently Welsh Week is being celebrated across the United States.
Click here to go to the BBC News Wales web page for more info.

In honor of the occasion (and because it was my lovely Dad's favourite flower) some freshly picked daffodils from my garden, with branches of forsythia and red buds of flowering quince.

I'll be linking this post to A Return to Loveliness with Kathy @ A Delightsome Life today

and I'll also be joining Liz @ Rose Vignettes for Fresh Cut Friday,

 where there are bound to be masses of pretty spring vignettes to see.



Sunday Favourites with Chari.

For Chari's Sunday Favourites this week here's another glimpse into la vie quotidienne here in Normandy in a post from May 2009.
Every country in Europe has it's own rules & regulations regarding recycling, it seems.
When we first moved to France, almost 13 years ago, our household garbage was collected every 2 weeks (!) after a couple of years this changed to weekly.
There were also twice yearly collections of old/unwanted metal items. These had to be placed in the street for collection and reminded us of the "sperrmuhl" collections we enjoyed when we lived in Bavaria.
Things remained that way for a long time and then we received a letter telling of a special card/permis that we could obtain from "la mairie" which would entitle us to use the local "dechetterie" or as we like to refer to it "the dump".
This certainly opened up a new world of special containers in which we could dispose of all those tricky items we had stashed in the outbuildings. Hazardous products such as old paint cans & aerosols, polysterene chips (the bane of my life), unwanted clothing, broken electrical items and much much more, the list was endless.
The "dechetterie" is very strictly operated by the "Gardien" who demands to see your "permis" when you arrive and then watches like a hawk to make sure that, heaven forfend, you place something in the wrong container.
So.....we loaded up the car at the weekend and went to the dump and as is the case with almost everything we do these days I captured the moment with my trusty Nikon Coolpix for a scrapbook page. I think it turned out quite well, n'est pas.

I'll tell you about the bottle bank another day..............................

A Few of My Favourite Things Saturday

The warm spring days we’ve experienced lately have not only brought out vibrant daffodils and wonderful bright yellow forsythia they’ve tempted me away from my cosy fireplace too.
Spring for me always means a return to my attic hideaway, where I can happily sit and blog and also create scrapbook pages without worrying about the mess, surrounded by some of my favourite things.

My Amish 9 star wall hanging which I bought at the end of a wonderful evening in Churchtown. PA. My dear friend Diane & I with other liked minded “tourists” had the pleasure of dining with a delightful Amish family. It was a wonderful experience and one which I shall always treasure.
Diane & I have seen many interesting places together, over the years, since we met in 2000 at the Quimper CIub annual meeting held that year in Washington D.C.

In 2008 we toured the Tutankhamun exhibit at the Dallas Museum of Art, then wandered through the galleries, where I fell in love with John Singer Sargent’s “Portrait of Dorothy, 1900”

A few years earlier, with her sister Susan on the way from Texas to the QCI meeting in Chicago in 2005, we took a slight detour and visited the King at Graceland, Memphis, TN.
That was a fun trip!

My Texan Eiffel Tour (a souvenir from the Dallas 2009 meeting).

Last but by no means least my Keep Calm and Carry On notice, a gift from the QCI members attending the 2010 meeting in Savannah which I co-hosted.
I was also presented with a signed copy of Paula Deens book "Savannah Style" which the above mentioned Susan (currently serving at President of the QCI) obtained after standing in line to meet PD when at a book signing in Dallas last year.
Click here to go to the QCI blog and read Susan's hilarious account of that day.

The hub.

Hilton Head is never far from my thoughts.

Miz Geraldine, the rabbit that started it all.
There must be music.

Splendour in the Grass and Sympathique by, a favourite band, Pink Martini.
I have so enjoyed revisiting A Few of my Favourite Things with y'all today (there's that Texan/Southern influence coming through!)
Of course I'm joining Laurie for A Few of My Favourite Things Saturday with this post, hope you'll pop over and visit Laurie and all the other bloggers participating there this weekend.
I never realised before writing this post how many of them are linked to the QCI and the friends I've made through the Club.

La Vie Quotidienne.

Beautiful, bold, yellow forsythia bringing spring back to my garden at last.

Nothing much going on around here this week just everyday life -  la vie quotidienne.

Tuesday dawned grey and misty but by midmorning developed into the kind of day that's good for mooching around the garden clearing away winter debris, that sort of thing.

One of my hydrangeas looking forlorn and unloved.

Once I get a pair of secateurs in my hand I do find it hard to stop, and so after cutting back the hydrangeas and allowing the fresh green shoots to show their faces to the sun, I tackled the wisteria which is already showing signs of rebirth.

Bright green shoots at last.

Sharing the garden with all the participants of Susans

Outdoor Wednesday @ A Southern Daydreamer.

After lunch I decided to make a sweet treat for our afternoon teatime and baked a batch of Lorraine Pascales cookies and cream fudge brownies.

Here's the recipe:
Equipment and preparation: You will need a 20cm/8in square baking tin.
Ingredients
165g/5½oz butter, plus extra for greasing
200g/7oz dark chocolate, grated or finely chopped
3 free-range eggs
2 free-range egg yolks
1 vanilla pod, seeds only (or alternatively 2 tsp vanilla extract)
165g/5½ oz soft light brown sugar
2 tbsp plain flour
1 tbsp cocoa powder
pinch salt
154g/5½oz pack chocolate biscuits, such as Oreos, broken into quarters
icing sugar, for dusting
Preparation method.
1.Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4. Grease a 20cm/8in square baking tin with butter, then line with baking paper with the paper overlapping the sides a little.
2.Melt the butter in a pan over a medium heat. When the butter has melted, remove the pan from the heat and add the grated (or chopped) chocolate. Leave to stand for a few minutes, or until the chocolate melts, and then stir together. Alternatively, you can put the chocolate and butter in a bowl and melt in the microwave in 25-second blasts, stirring well each time.
3.Whisk the eggs, egg yolks and vanilla together in a large bowl until the eggs begin to get light and fluffy. Add the sugar in two additions, whisking between each. Pour it around the side of the egg mix so as not to knock out the air that has been whisked in. Keep whisking until the mixture becomes stiffer. Once the egg mixture is ready, pour the chocolate into it - again around the sides so as not to knock the air out.
4.Add the flour, cocoa powder, salt and a third of the biscuits and stir until fully combined, then pour the mixture into the prepared tin. Scatter the remaining biscuits over the top, pressing them in slightly. Bake on the middle shelf of the oven for 25–30 minutes. The middle should be very so slightly gooey. Leave the brownies to cool in the tin - the top will sink and crack a little.
5.Pull the brownies out using the overlapping paper and cut into squares.
Dust with icing sugar.

These are those most luscious brownies I've ever made, dense and fudgy and so full of  "chocolateyness" .
Word of warning!
When you cut them they will crumble a little around the edges and, if you're like me, you will find it hard to resist popping these little morsels into your mouth each time you pass by the plate.

I think the safest thing would be for me to take these straight over to

Miz Helen's for Full Plate Thursday

 and share the love!