Sunday Afternoon in the countryside in France. Françoise and Daniel are dear friends of one of my friends, Jean-Jacques Pérennès OP. They live in Lyon, France where Françiose teaches high school physics and chemistry. Daniel teaches contemporary history of the Arabic world in Paris at the Sorbonne, so has a one room flat there. But on the weekends they escape to their once abandoned 19th century farmhouse in Courzieu near Lyon. They invited us over for a leisurely Sunday dinner, classically French, with different wines before, during and after dinner and food that is simply indescribable, served in the kitchen next to the wood stove and fireplace. Afterwards, we took a stroll around the country side to see how spring was creeping up the valley, coming first to the cherry trees and the wildflowers but not yet to the pines and oak.
In the top photo, Françiose and Daniel sit and chat over expresso with the remnants of dinner lingering. Here is the yard from the porch outside the kitchen. The drinking water comes from the spring on the right.
In this photo you can see that this far up the hill only the green of the grass signals the coming of spring. But if you look down, notice, anywhere you are, you see the sprouts, flowers and buds of new life. It is always so.