A few of my favourite photos from September.

My apologies, but La Rochelle part 2 will follow soon!  I have just realised that I have not edited many of the photos I took then and time is not on my side at the moment!  So much fruit and vegetables in the garden which need bottling etc, that my blogs are taking second place to the kitchen, I am afraid. I will get back to normal eventually! These photos have been on my photo blog, but I know that many of you do not follow it.  I hope that you enjoy them!

La Rochefoucauld chateau

and its reflection in the Tardoire river!

A hover-fly  and  a bee on the garlic chives.

Autumn is arriving!

The last of this year's roses.

Sunset.

Green woodpecker.

Peacock butterfly.

An autumn Marigold brightens the day!

Mr Sparrow paddling and shouting it to the world, it seems.

Rainbow

Last but not least, we have had a lot of green lizards around this year.

I will catch up on all your blogs eventually; I promise!

What you will see when I return to posting again at the end of June (I hope!),

What with all the post-holiday effects and so much to do on our return home, I will not be blogging regularly for a while yet!   We are extra busy catching up with house and garden, especially with the fruit trees, which are heavy with fruit, so they are very time consuming. Added to that, we have visitors coming!  I  posted my daily diary here by mistake the other day, but despite removing it fairly quickly and putting it in the correct place, there were a number of comments, and then emails from people who could not see the post. Sorry, but it is now at its proper place at http://photodiarydps.blogspot.com.  I have also moved the comments there as well.   The other reason for holding back is because I do not currently have the time to properly visit all your blogs and I have sooooooo many photos to edit!!!

Here is a small photographic taster, from our travels outside the Charente, with much more when I get back to normal:-)

A visit to Carcassonne. A historic fortified French town in the Aude department,  not  far from the Mediterranean.

A trip to Barcelona in Spain.

Part of our sumptuous stateroom on the cruise ship Liberty of the Seas.

The gymnasium on the ship.

A visit to Monaco, just before the Formula 1 GP took place

The Sphinx room on board ship.

Mount Vesuvius, just outside Naples

Snow on the Pyrenees - a rare sight in May, we are told!

Off to the UK!

'Visiting' both our families at Haycombe Cemetery near Bath

A visit to my grandparent's old house at Batheaston.  Sadly the two garages have been built in front of it, so it was impossible to see it properly!

Back home in the Charente, a blackbird takes a bath.

The bees are busy

as are the butterflies. This is "Small tortoiseshell" Aglais urticae

Wow, three years of blogging! How the time flies when you are having fun!

Three years ago today, I published my first blog!  The time has just flown, and when I first started, I expected to run out of steam in a few months!  

Thanks to blogging, I have seen so much more of not only the Charente, but everywhere we have recently visited.  Having camera in hand makes me so much more observant, and I now notice things that in the past would have gone unseen!  In reading blogs, I have also taken tours through other people's eyes to almost all the places in the world, and ones I am unlikely ever to visit in person.  Thank you everyone for this, but I must single out  three blogs for   special praise; to Gaelyn, who has given me the finest views of the Grand Canyon I could ever expect to see, and also to Joan and Graham for keeping Africa alive for me.  There are others who doubtless deserve mention, but these three have been quite exceptional for me. 

I have made friends all over the world; some I have met, and others I keep in touch with by email and hope to meet one day.  When I have not been feeling well, people I barely know have been there for me, and when I feel like taking a short break from the computer, all my followers and vitual friends are there when I return.  Thank you everyone who has made my blogging experience a great one and I hope to be at it for some time to come.

For the past month I have been posting about our trip to Casablanca, so here are a few of my favourite photos that I have taken over this period here in the Charente.

09/01/13 I saw this gorgeous specimen parked outside our bank.

11/01/13 One of very few sunsets we have seen this year. It is mostly cloudy and raining!

14/01/13 While on the highway to Angouleme, being followed (temporarily!) by a Porsche, our favourite car!

and the same day, the flooded River Touvre on the outskirts of Angouleme.

16/01/13 Friends to dinner, and at last I had unpacked the decanter that my parents had bought many years ago in Mozambique. Probably red and white wine would look better but I was drinking Rose so......

20/01/13 We had a luncheon in the local village and decided that taking the car out was too risky, so we used shank's pony instead!

Same day, looking through some trees. Wonder when this cart last had an outing?!

24/01/13 A very cross goldfinch seeing off a blue tit at the feeder.

25/01/13 The River Son, not far north of us, is normally a quiet stream, but has now burst its banks.  The rain just does not stop!

26/01/13 A macro of my flowering orchid; a birthday present a couple of years back.

27/01/13 Raindrops keep falling on my head.........

28/01/13 During a break in the rain, I was walking around the garden trying to find a subject for a photo, when this very tiny fly landed right on the moss that I was looking at. Right time, right place!

minutes later, this goldfinch posed perfectly for me.

29/01/13 I noticed that there were some signs of apple blossom looking 'spring like'.

30/01/13 The church at Suaux seen from the entrance to the Mairie.

and on the way home, we saw this Norwegian Fjord horse in a waterlogged paddock.

31/01/13 I was fascinated by this 'rose' like fungi growing on the wood in the woodpile. 

A great tit poses for me.

02/01/13 The church in La Rochefoucauld

and the supermarket,

while the sky outside suddenly turned black.

Arriving home, we appeared to be in the eye of the storm!

04/02/13  Finally, photos of two blue tits and....

a great tit, waiting patiently for his turn at the feeder!

See also - My Life Before Charente Updated 08/02/2013

and my daily photo diary at http://photodiarydps.blogspot.fr/