14 juillet pictures

Yesterday was the 14th of July, the French national holiday. In France it's called le 14 juillet or la fête nationale. This year's celebrations were slightly subdued, because six French soldiers were killed in Afghanistan earlier in the week. It was a Bastille Day in mourning for many.

Tomatoes in the garden

Walt and I didn't do anything special for the holiday. We just stayed home, cooked lunch — a big "fry-up" as I hear the British call it; tempura is what we called it. Turnips/navets, mushrooms/champignons, summer squash/courgettes, and shrimp/crevettes lightly battered and deep-fried.

Tempura of vegetables and shrimp, followed by
a tomato-basil-mozzarella salad

That's not a kind of cooking we do very often, primarily because it makes such a big mess in the kitchen. It was good though, with a Japanese-style dipping sauce of shrimp broth, soy sauce, ginger, horseradish, and mirin (rice wine).

Grapes and grapevine leaves

In the afternoon, I went out for the regular walk with the dog and took some pictures (click the pictures to see them in a larger size). The afternoon weather was beautiful. The garden is soaking up a lot of sun right now, and it needs to hurry because the forecast this morning says we should expect a week of damp, autumnal weather starting tomorrow. We'll see if it actually rains in any significant way this time.

Two little prunelles, or sloes

Today we are headed to Le Grand-Pressigny to have lunch with Jean and Nick — they have a blog called A Very Grand Pressigny. We'll be able to sit out on the patio in the sun, I'm sure. We're taking a bottle of the champagne I bought in Mareuil-sur-Aÿ back in June as our contribution to our 15 juillet celebration. It's about an hour's drive there, and an hour back, so we have to be sages and not over-imbibe.

Wildflowers

Then we can look forward to a windy, wet weekend, they tell us. Bien sûr. Qui vivra verra.