How often do you hear that? But it is. Until last week, we had had no appreciable rain since early Spring. The lake, which dried up in July is still barely a duck pond and here and now, in December, the oaks have yet to lose their leaves and the grass is still growing fast.
Out riding this morning, I stopped to pass a few words with the farmer. Climbing out of his pick-up, he surveyed his huge maize field. I could tell he wasn’t particularly happy. ‘Il n’y a aucun palombes’, he said…no pigeons. One of the joys for the farmers here in winter is the shooting of pigeon. They flock here in their thousands in the winter, swooping down on the maize stubble and settling in the poplar plantations…sometimes the sky really darkens when the enormous flocks, many kilometres long, streak across the sky in front of the Pyrenees. Last week I was riding past a local farm and the farmer was stumping up the steep grassy field from the woods with a gun over his shoulder. I hailed a hello as I trotted past and he raised his arm and shook a brace of pigeon at me, a ridiculous beam across his face. Two for the pot. It’s the little things isn’t it?