"OK, here's a landscape"

Title courtesy of Kendall. I don't do big landscapes normally, so I thought it would make a change from flowers.

This morning, S was off on one of his training walks and he suggested I might like to come as far as the borie. "You'll easily manage it with all the walking you do these days," he said. I readily agreed, forgetting that it involves 200 metres of climbing (a fact that S also neglected to point out, since this is a mere stroll to him). "What you don't seem to realise," I said as I panted along behind him, "is that when I go walking, I stop every 30 seconds to take photos." Still, I made it, and there is a fabulous view from up there. Unfortunately it was a bit too cloudy to see Canigou clearly -- you can just make out the lower slopes in the distance on the right. Our village is squarely in the middle, surrounded by vines, of course -- in fact everything not covered in trees in this photo is vines. It's much better in large.

The garrigue is a punishing environment in high summer, but it's delightful on a sunny spring day, with enough wind to keep you cool. There are flowers everywhere: poppies, dandelions, thistles, bright pink cistus, hyacinths, honeysuckle, wild garlic, massive drifts of blue lin de Montpellier, and of course the classic thyme and rosemary. We must have seen half a dozen different kinds of orchid too. I couldn't resist taking dozens of photos. If you aren't too bored with flower photos, I made a set on Flickr.

I walked back down for lunch while S carried on to the other side of the mountain. Practising using the phone apps that I set up yesterday, he emailed me a photo of the spot he chose for lunch :) Later in the afternoon I drove out to pick him up, admiring the light on the vines. It was a beautiful evening, but too cool and windy to sit in the garden, so we had red mullet a la plancha at home instead.