SPRING

Spring is highly dramatic here, everything seems to be in an enormous hurry. The land has had a long sleep during the cold winter and the next winter won't be far off. The trees get greener by the day, wheat leaps out of the ground and goes to head, flowers appear, vines sprout from dead looking stalks, the rape flowers, a bright yellow and goes back to green.

When we first arrived in Paris and travelled to Alsace there were no leaves on the trees, buds were just begining to appear. Two weeks later in Alsace it was green everywhere, you could virtually see a change every day. As we travelled south through different altitudes and climates we went further into spring -- luscious green with all the cows appearing, blinking and jumping in the sun, dirty from being in the sheds, manure being spread in the fields, wisteria hanging over doorways. Then back into winter in the mountains in the Massif Central and the Pyrenees -- very few leaves, stock all locked away, little pasture growth.

Here in the Gers spring is well advanced, the rape has almost finished flowering, wheat is in head, green but changing colour, pasture growth is incredible, bright green, diverse, thick and full of clover, some has already been cut for hay. The oaks are out and the vines have leaves and little grapes on them, everything is rushing headlong into summer. The roadsides where we walk are like our child hood stories, a range of grasses, herbs, plants we try with difficulty to grow in Australia (why bother when they grow so well here), flowers everywhere and all blending perfectly -- a northern hemisphere European spring -- very different from our Queensland experience !!!