Life is still busy around here with four grandchildren. As often happens in August, the temperatures dropped. On the day we went to Lourmarin a mistral also arrived and almost blew us out of the market. The kids were walking around with their arms tucked up inside their t-shirts.

Pretty hooks. They also make great knobs for furniture.

I’m always intrigued with birdcages but have no idea where I could put it.

Isn’t this a great keyhole? It’s on the little church at Lourmarin.

Micah likes his chocolate.

Don’t you wish you had the energy of a two year old? As Bill Cosby once said, If you had 200 two year olds, you could rule the world. My four grandsons are still here and enjoying life with a focus that I love to watch.

Aren’t these cute t-shirts? The baby has one too with the number 4 on it but he wasn’t available when I took this photo. He had a previous engagement with his mother and eating.

Here are the backs of the t-shirts. They say “big brother” in Italian. These three are looking into the window of a kitchen watching a chef cook in a kitchen in Aix.

The back of the baby’s shirt. He has hair but it is so light that you can only see it in the sunshine-another blondie.

Here are the three oldest pushing a round hay bale. They managed to move it a few feet. The second grandson said, “I thought the bales would be soft like they look from a distance, but they are hard and prickly”. We had to explain that once hay was piled in piles. I need to go find a copy of a painting in my memory of two field workers asleep on one.

And I’m not talking about the Olympics, although we have been watching them. No, I’m talking about the arrival of my son and his wife and four children. They are having so much fun, swimming in the pool and exploring. I was hoping to pick up some inexpensive toys at a vide grenier before they arrived but never managed that. Still, we are managing. This afternoon they rounded up as many grasshoppers as they could find, put an inner-tube on the ground, filled it with leaves and grass and made a grasshopper condominium. The two year old has been fascinated with my truly neurotic cat, Elliot. The cat was all right for a while keeping a wary eye on all of the activity until the two year old got too energetic with two badmitton raquets near him and since then I have only seen him at night when the kids have gone to bed. I have no idea where he has gone. The two year old keeps asking where he is and yelling, “Cat!” at the top of his lungs. I’m not posting photos of them although I have lots-just too many wierdos out there. Instead here is a photo of an interesting yard I saw the other day:

Isn’t this colorful? My laundry never looks like this. I don’t even have a clothes line, just one of those little racks.

My vegetable garden doesn’t look like this either. My garden is a disappointment this year. By the time I got back from Switzerland for the arrival of the new grandson, there wasn’t anything left to buy in the plant nurseries. A man finally dug around in the back of his place and found some strange varieties of left over tomato plants that no one wanted to buy, two round squash plants that never grew one squash. My melon plants are sort of thriving-I have six small ones forming-my basil just a few inches high. I don’t think I planted it soon enough.

During July and August there are music festivals all over Provence. Maurice and I have started going to a few. It’s a really nice experience to sit outside, usually at a chateau that makes wine, and listen to music. We saw two performances at the Chateau Floran.

This is a photo of the Herbie Hancock performance. He is a jazz performer whose album won a 2008 grammy for album of the year. I like light jazz but his is not that variety. It is one of those edgie, pushing the envelope types. I admire the talent and energy but some of it was hard for me to listen to. I just like to hear a meloday somewhere in there. He did, however, have two really incredible female vocalists that were the highlight of the evening for me.
At the same chateau, Maurice and I heard a Japanese orchestra and a Russian piano player for more of the traditional type of music. Next up is a choir in an old abbey. I’m looking forward to that-just sitting inside a centuries old building listening to music by Chopin.

I’ve posted photos before of the chateau near us. Part of it is habitable and, in fact, last year there were tenants, renters I think. This year it is shut up tight. I am always intrigued by the ruined part and the ruins next to it.

The part of the chateau that is sometimes lived in. In fact, I bet you could rent a few rooms there if you wanted. The owners are the family who sold us our property for building our home.

A ruined section. Kind of makes me sad to see it falling apart.

This building was built to house pigeons. It was the fashion a few centuries ago to build very elaborate pigeoneries. The roof is gone on this one if you go in and look up.

Look at this center stone of the window about to fall out. When it goes I think that side of the building and more of the roof will go.

Sideroads of Europe

View of a wheat field near our village with rolls of hay waiting to be used when winter arrives.

Along with America, Provence is now hot. We had a cold May, a cool June, July was warmer with some cool days and, now, August has arrived and brought hot temperatures along with it. I usually don’t mind. Our house is really well insulated and in the mornings we open the sliding glass doors to let in the cool temperatures-it gets into the 60’s at night-turn on a ceiling fan and it is very comfortable until two in the afternoon or so when we close the shutters part way, close the doors and turn on the air conditioning until the sun goes behind a nearby mountain about eight.

Of course there is always something to spoil things. About a week ago we got into our car and the air conditioner was blowing hot air. This being August when most of France is on vacation, we couldn’t get our car into a place to have it looked at for a week. So we used what my son calls “red neck air conditioning” and rolled down the windows. It’s not too bad that way, not miserable, unless the car has been sitting in the sun in a parking lot somewhere, but still. We took the car in finally to a dealership and sat in their unairconditioned waiting room for well over an hour. By then it was almost 100 degrees outside. I could see air conditioning units in various places around the place but they weren’t turning them on. There was a fan that they finally plugged in which helped some and I glugged down a Coke which I haven’t had in years to try and cool down. When I lived in the States I remembered that almost always, when there is a problem with the air conditioner, it is usually the compressor which, in other words, means big bucks to fix. It turned out that this was what was wrong with our car. Did they have the parts needed there? Of course not. Could they find the parts in Aix, Marseilles or even Paris? No. They had to be ordered from the maufacturer in Germany. We were told it was rare to need a compressor which I find hard to believe but, whatever. So now we wait for over a week before we can go back.

At least we can go back home and get in our swimming pool, right? Wrong. We have slowly been loosing tiles and Maurice, in a fit of perfectionism, between company visiting, had to empty the pool so he could reglue to missing tile-the whole surface is covered in these small blue tiles-then regrout and much as he could. His obsession, of course, means work for me as well as I was out there helping with the part where you take a wet sponge and wipe off the excess grout. In the process, I now have scabs on my finger tips. We had to get up at 6 AM two mornings in a row to escape the heat and work six hours or so until the pool felt like an oven. Now he is letting the pool sit for a few days for everything to dry well before refilling it with water.
We are so spoiled with our air conditioned cars and swimming pools. I remember not having it, especially when I think about a trip as a child in an unairconditioned car from New Mexico to Houston, Texas to visit my grandmother. All she had were fans in each room. Our house in our home town must have been very hot too-but I don’t think any place can be as hot as Houston- but I don’t remember it being so.

So I plan to take it easy and stay indoors as much as possible. By the way, when you are hot and want to say so in French always say “J’ai chaud” which means, to me anyway, “I have hot”. Don’t say, “Je suis chaud” which means I am hot in a, well, slutty way. Don’t ask me how I know this.