April showers!

Well I've just returned from 10 days  break in the UK. 3 days in Yorkshire, where both my daughters live, followed by a week with the aged parent in his new Retirement Village home in Hertfordshire. So, 3 days fun and chaos....trips to the park and helping catch up with all their laundery ( was there ever a family in need of a full-time maid!) and a week of sedate pub and Italian restaurant lunches ( yum-yum!) and bus trips into Watford for a bit of personal shopping! After 5 years in France I now find M&S overwhelming! So much stuff...so many styles, and colours...the choice is impossible!....and the food hall is equally bad! No wonder they say everybody is getting so fat nowadays!
It is WONDERFUL to be back home! I flew into Poitiers yesterday afternoon...we then spent 2 hours in Leroy Merlin...yes, it's back to the renovations! No time for food shopping so it was back home to eggs and home-grown asparagus, with baguette and a glass of red wine! It can't be beaten!
This morning Geoff went off to do some lawn-mowing for friends with a holiday home, dropping me & Batty at the 'aire de loisir' in Asnois. We walked along the banks of the River Charente...it's very high at the moment. Although there have been constant showers and a horrible dip in the temperature, the 'Departement de Vienne' is on water shortage alert, so I can only assume that the sluices have been closed!
It made the river look good...flowing fast...( hopefully we may yet see the elusive kingfisher this year!)......with green grassy banks and wildflowers popping up everywhere.
I carried on along the pathway, past Mont Lorier and in the direction of Maureville where I  passed a large clump of snakeshead fritillary. These were the star of the morning, but now celandines, lungwort, cowslips, lord's & ladies, and ladies smock, to name but a few of the flowers,can be seen in abundance! I only wish I could identify the birdsong as easily as the flowers. The cuckoo, who was calling  a couple of weeks ago couldn't be heard today...perhaps he's sulking because of the poor weather, but everything else was singing away loudly! The hoopoes have been spotted...but not by me!...and the ever faithful swallows and black redstarts have made nests in the old pigpens in the front garden. Our noisiest 'lodger' is a young kestrel. His parents have nested in the stonework under the eaves of the farmhouse here at Maureville for the last 4 years. They regularly rear an offspring or two & complain noisily at our presence in the garden, whilst the youngster complains noisily for his next meal!