les vignes et Caussiniojouls

Many vineyards stretch between this  hameau and Caussiniojouls. Many paths meander through this landscape offering varied experiences. All paths, verges and areas of vegetation are now filled with flowering Bupleurm – small umbels of lime green attracting butterflies and other insects with wings. Clematis flammula  –  frothy and white – is still flowering after a month – lovely to see it spread across the ground like a white lacy cloth  . . .  

 . . .  just after taking this photo, a hare appeared on the path and stopped, stricken with shock at seeing a human, before bounding away.

Beautiful, strong and now, sound stone work on the Château walls. It’s in the process of restoration . . . .

 . .  12C buildings with a 18-metre high castle keep that dominates the area.

Le chat du Château?

Some areas of the village have received the seed sown wild flower mix – decorative but nothing like the natural verges . .

 . .   the odd althea (hollyhock) seeded as village merges with the vines. Just after taking this photo another hare leapt across the path. Two hares – surely that is lucky?

At the eleventh hour he came,
But his wages were the same
As ours who all day long had trod
The wine-press of the Wrath of God.

When he shouldered through the lines
Of our cropped and mangled vines,
His unjaded eye could scan
How each hour had marked its man.

(Children of the morning-tide
With the hosts of noon died,
And our noon contingents lay
Dead with twilight’s spent array.)

Since his back had felt no load ,
Virtue still in him abode;
So he swiftly made his own
Those last spoils we had not won.

We went home delivered thence,
Grudging him no recompense
Till he portioned praise of blame
To our works before he came.

Till he showed us for our good–
Deaf to mirth, and blind to scorn–
How we might have best withstood
Burdens that he had not born!  Rudyard Kipling The Vineyard