Catching up

Well, I'm sorry about the blip-gap. We've had guests, friends and family staying, and lots of stuff to do at the new house, so there never seemed to be a minute to sit at my computer.

However, now they've all left so this morning I took advantage of cloudy skies and lower temperatures to take the dogs on a dawn-walk across the hills near our vineyard. It's been stiflingly hot for ages, so we've been praying for some rain to swell our grapes before harvest in about three weeks' time. No luck with the rain, but it's good to have had a drop in temperature.

This view is of the vineyard next to ours. I wish our vines looked as tidy as these. Our top grenache are just visible below the left hand pylon.

Everything is tinder-dry and the wasps and wild boar are taking advantage of the ripening grapes to assuage their thirst. This morning I heard the first gunshots ring out in the hills towards Vailhan. Although the hunting season does not officially start until the end of the harvest, vineyard owners are allowed to shoot boar they see damaging their crop. I'm hoping large clumps of hair from our moulting dogs will repel the boar from our land - but I'm not counting on it. There is evidence of them everywhere and walking through the garrigue at this time of year can be unnerving. I neither want to get shot, nor to have my dogs mistaken for boar by a shortsighted hunter - nor by a short sighted boar for that matter.