The Little Words Mean the Most

Our bottle-dump tour of nearby towns

Premise: we had a lot of wine bottles to dispose of. Well, technically, I (not Sim One) had a lot of wine bottles to dispose of. France has been a heavy recycler of everything for the two decades we've spent here. Which means every town has a "bottle dump" -- an official collection place. We decided to spend the afternoon revisiting some nearby towns to discard our glass and catch up on developments. The tour begins in neighboring Alignan du Vent, which had the nicest dump. Next to that was Morgan, which had more typical dumps...but also a breathtaking, Sleeping-Beauty-type castle. Cross country to wine village Caux, proud for some reason of the date 1935; and where, with the help of the car's back-up camera, you can see all of main street.

The revolution in France may be going slower than hoped-for due ...

 

... to painting the slogans in English? Dunno. This, across from our favorite baker. There hasn't been a "free" Occitania since about 1210 and even then it paid nominal homage to both French and Spanish overlords. Never too late?

Armistice Day in our small French town

 

November 11. The official parade passes our house (directly behind the flag; we live in the same block as the town hall). The man with the sash is our energetic young-ish mayor whose leadership has done so much. He and Simone had a long convo about how much we've loved living here for 20 years. She congratulated him on his work. The procession visited the town cemetery first and finally the town's memorial square, where La Marseillaise, the French national anthem, was sung twice, youth read poems in French and English, and there was a band and chorus. Deeply moving.

A good marché en Pézenas: lots of convo; fresh pasta, roasted poulet, ancienne tomatoes, tasting at a local vintner, & Sim One bought herself a cold-weather puffy vest (because this farmers' market sells cheap clothes, too); it's snowing in the Pyrenees

 

Our afternoon walk in the village Valros & back home

 

Béziers squares: A sunset walk through the nearest bigger city, 25 minutes away; it's roasted chestnut season & that's a water feature 2 inches deep rippling across an underground car park

 

An afternoon walk through neighboring Pézenas, arty town known for its Molière

 

The French flag as flown by our freezer

 

 

Sim One, Rock Hunter & the castle next door in a muddy pottery region

 

post-vineyard, hiking shoes drying in the kitchen window well

 

The house in France & a little sundown walk