Enjoying some time off

It's nice to have a few weeks off. That's what July has turned into. The garden is growing and hasn't needed much maintenance for a while. We've had no travel or visitors in July. The 2011 French Open tennis tournament is history, and we did our bit for the Tour de France cycling race. The weather has been fairly summery for 3½ months now. What more could you ask for?

Nobody talks about the drought any more, even though
it's still just as dry. I guess most of the spring crops
have been harvested now.

There are plenty of tasks that I ought to be tackling out in the garden and around the house, inside and out. Weeding. Scrubbing. Pruning. But I'm not motivated. That's okay. It's only July. It'll all wait until August. July 14 today, by the way. That's the French national holiday of course — Bastille Day. So I'm going to take another day off.

La rue des Laurendières in our neighborhood.
It's called a street — une rue — but it's not paved.

There are calls to make. We need to get the furnace — well, boiler, actually — serviced. Call Savelys, the company we have a maintenance and emergency repair service contract with. We need to have the chimney swept. Insurance requires that it be swept annually. Both these obligations remind me of winter. I don't want to think about it. Besides, you can't call any business people on Bastille Day.

For lunch, how about a nice lasagne of summer squash with
tomato sauce, béchamel sauce, and ewe's-milk cheese?

We have some more old friends from California coming in about a week to spend a few days. That's something to look forward to. We also have two trips planned now, for late August and early October. We've rented a gîte rural — a house out in the country — for each trip. We'll be traveling with old friends and seeing new countryside. Each trip will be only three or four days long. That's all the time we can take away from the cat and the garden. The dog will go with us.

And some garlic bread made with crushed garlic,
sweet butter, and chopped fresh rosemary?

The hard part of living this life here in Saint-Aignan is trying to keep a steady rhythm. To be busy but not too busy; idle but not too idle; productive but not too driven. To remember, when lazy, that the busy days will come again. The garden will produce tons of squash, eggplants, tomatoes, corn, and beans that will need to be processed and put up for the winter. It will rain again, someday, and the grass will grow. The hedge will get trimmed. The firewood will get sawed. The season will change. But not yet.

Oops, I just remembered that I do need to go do some watering this morning. And then cook lunch. Today is another day.