Autumn harvest–huge red apples, quince, last tomatoes, pears, eggplant even until November… Many visitors including a whole house for a week from the Jardin des Sambucs…
Four nights residency by an uncle of my husband’s, a rare relative. Then Lorraine Chenot and Marie-Françoise Perret from the Parc naturel http://www.parc-monts-ardeche.fr/ for a delightful lunch, and a day with my publisher from Actes Sud, Aïté Bresson, author herself, and her friend the artist Lumi Lorthe,http://www.lumi-lorthe.com/index.php/accueil, also a real pleasure.
Another lovely day (still not much rain here) spent with Michel and Christine Pena http://www.penapaysages.com/ who have their own residence and library in the Cévennes at Aujac. They have great future plans, which doesnt prevent Christine from carefully planting her saffron bulbs…
The water table is very low still although, happier than most other southern regions, we did have first 5cm then later 15cm of rain early November. Fall color is strange this year. It began a month early from drought stress, with wrinkled sad foliage, but now is lasting longer than usual. Grapes and olives matured early too whereas other crops lasted much longer–summer vegetables for example. Neighbors kindly came to pick my sparse olive crop, here Marie Lepoitevin perched in a tree…
Kiwis picked late November…
Meanwhile, a new project begins: restoration of the old pigsty to make a conference room… First of all Wim has to take out everything that has been stored there since 1976…
Here is what the building looks like before any work is begun. Jean Marc and Rémi have cleared away the brambles and robinia trees growing, in one case, right through the roof…
north west view
north center and from north-east 
south view, giving onto the big meadow 
But the big event of November was the visit of Agnès and Nicolas Bruckin, owners and creators of the fascinating Jardins des Sambucs near LeVigan. http://www.jardinsambucs.com. Un Agnès had “carte blanche” for the week and invited a whirlwind of friends who made ceramics and land art and went off for two days also to visit the Watershed Line and the Cavern at Pont d’Arc. And cleared up a bit of garden for me. Amandine Maria came by also to deliver her new map of the hillside (see Galery). Here is Amandine and Janine Delpeuch ceramic artist and all of use around a table playing with clay on a day of heavy rain (so rare!).
Nicolas’ work to prevent the mimosa tree from falling…