Our year in monthly photos and wishing all my followers all the very best for 2016 and the coming holidays.

We will be away in a few days time to celebrate Christmas in England with my father-in-law. Computers will be staying at home; only the Nexus tablet will be with us for emailing and maybe the odd single photo on the photodiary.  I find  that blogging on this tablet is beyond me, so I hope to resume when back at home early in the New Year!

A moody sky driving home 27 January 2015

Greenfinch versus Sparrow 10 February 2015

Our friends from Australia, Gunter and Angie with myself and Nigel out to lunch

29 March 2015

Broad bean flowers,16 April 2015

A trip to Amsterdam 10 May 2015

White Storks 26 June 2015

Queen of Spain Fritillary 11 July 2015

A happy face 19 August 2015

Clouds taken through the bus window after a days' outing with the club 22 September 2015

Rose after the rain 03 October 2015

Small Copper still surviving 12 November 2015

Blue tit 2 December 2015

Happy Christmas 

Gesëende Kersfees

Nginifisela inhlanhla ne mpumelelo e nyakeni

Nadolig Llawen

Nollaig Shona Dhuit

Nollaig Chridheil agus Bliadhna Mhath Ur

Buone Feste Natalizie

Feliz Natal

Feliz Navidad!

God Jul and (Och) Ett Gott Nytt Ar

Kung His Hsin Nien bing Chu Shen Tan

 Gun Tso Sun Tan'Gung Haw Sun

 Kung Ho Hsin Hsi. Ching Chi Shen Tan

Shinnen omedeto. Kurisumasu Omedeto

Sawadee Pee Mai

Gajan Kristnaskon

Froehliche Weihnachten

Kala Christouyenna

Mo'adim Lesimkha. Chena tova.

Vrolijk Kerstmis en een Gelukkig Nieuw Jaar

See you all in 2016

Also see my daily diary HERE

and My Life Before Charente (updated 3 December 2015) 

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/

An Abundance of Courgettes (Zucchini) and Haricots (Beans)

Despite not feeling quite myself over the past week, (see last post), the garden has been unrelenting in its production of more and more tomatoes, beans and courgettes!!  There were potatoes to be dug as well!! Consequently, the produce needed to be sorted out fairly quickly, otherwise I would have had too much to cope with if the harvesting and preservation fell behind!. I guess the bottling process distracts me from the shingles!!  For many great ideas for surplus courgettes, see HERE .This is a great link with masses of ideas. 

I am, however, very thankful that my  efforts over the growing season have been so well rewarded with loads of vegetables, over a spring and summer of very difficult and extreme weather conditions.

Because I have only a small deep freeze, the easy "freezing" way out was not available to me, so I have been bottling more and more!!  Thankfully, I had a good supply of jars, with plenty still in reserve  for vegetables still to come.

Because we have had carpenters in (lots of noise and another post), I have been making courgette cake (two kinds) as an accompaniment to their numerous cups of coffee.  Both recipes were very popular and the suggestion was that while the courgettes last, they might just move in!!  As the recipes are on my cookery site and I am feeling a bit lazy, I will give you the links for these recipes, so you can follow them there if they take your fancy.

Courgette Chocolate Cake

Courgette Lemon Cake

Courgette Chutney 1

Courgette Chutney 2

Courgette and Ginger Jam

Courgette Pickle (Yum Yum)

Back to the pickled beans ......  I brought the pickling liquid mixture, left from the courgettes, to the boil,  and added the haricot beans, washed, top and tailed and cut in half. The mixture was then brought back to the boil and bottled immediately. In France, these beans are called haricots verts, but  you would probably know them as French green beans. 

I experimented with this last year and the result, although I say it myself, was fantastic!  The beans seem to shrink a little in the bottle, but when we came to eat them, I simply put the drained beans in fresh water and brought them to the boil.  Drain and serve hot; they were delicious and slightly crunchy, just how we love them. You could probably just make up the pickle mixture for the beans alone, but I have always used it for the two recipes - courgettes and beans.

Pickled Beans (see above)

Curried Beans

I made these last year and we thoroughly enjoyed them last winter, so I made some more!!!

Finally, I just liked these clouds that were in front of the sun the other evening.

 

See also - My Life Before Charente updated  August 26 2012 

It was a dark and stormy night!

There was  a very noisy and stormy evening here a few days ago.   I was fascinated by the changing sky and took several photos from various positions, which I thought you might enjoy.  I have to say that, at the end of  this celestial display, despite watching the rain falling not too far away, we did not receive one single drop!!  The clouds  and thunder circled all around us for a while, then dispersed for about three quarters of an hour, only to return with even more visual and sound effects. I have tried to place the photos in the order that I took them.

Early on, with the rain very visible at the back on the right

My neighbour's sheep in the foreground, getting on with what sheep do!

The sun just starting to set

This looked like flames in the sky to me

Suddenly the sky started to clear

As the sun caught the edges of the cloud

But then it returned with a vengeance