Guests arrive and the music commences...

My two young musical guests arrived yesterday in their hire car from Lyon airport, very wisely having taken my advice of coming the scenic way via Pont-en-Royans, Vercors, and Col de Rousset... it would be hard to beat that as a way of arriving!

Today we popped down to the market, had a salad lunch on my balcony, went back down to Die for the afternoon rehearsal with the choir and professional orchestra, had a soak in the Drôme, and finished with a delicious three-course classic French meal at le Rendez-Vous. A splendid day!

The Meyrosse

We are lucky here to have the little river Meyrosse, partially fed by rain run-off, but also by underground aquifers coming from the Vercors Plateau. As it's quite a narrow valley right to its head, it rarely gets very high after torrential downpours, with the result there's not really any floodplain.

After the fairly copious rain we've had over the past couple of days, I wanted to see if there was much evidence of the rain in the Meyrosse, and apart from mild calcium sediment (giving a milky colour rather than the dark 'muddy' water from marnes), it was barely any higher than before the rain, meaning that (thankfully) the water has been absorbed into the soils and can rehydrate vegetation. Still more needed though! Much more!!

Lawn

Thinking that there might be rain around yesterday, I gave the lawn a quick once-over to remove as much dried grass as I could, to allow the soil to breathe as much as possible, and to encourage new growth once the lawn had had a good drenching. Well, we got a good 25mm of rain yesterday, and much to my surprise and delight, since I took this photo this morning, we've already had another 30mm or more, and I think the grand total might well get close to 50mm (that's roughly two inches in old money). So with any luck, I'll have a properly green lawn to mow before I leave in September!

Rain!

I got tempted to go a bit further round (almost to Marignac) to go into Die to do some shopping this morning, and I'm very glad I did, as it wasn't too hot, but with plenty of sun.

Well, this afternoon has been rather a contrast – after some rumbling, Romeyer has enjoyed pretty full-on thundery shower of nearly an hour, starting when it was 35C outside, and finishing at 23C after (I'd guess) about an inch of rain. Lovely, on many counts!