nature – Lo Vedo Life

Earth Day and a full moon

A few thoughts, a few photographs

I didn’t want to let this Earth Day slide past without at least a mention, a vote of confidence, a rousing voice from the cheering section.

Here in the South of France, we’ve had some perfect weather lately: warm during the day, cooler at night, with clear, crisp, fresh air. Air so clear that we’ve had several days with great views of the distant Pyrenees, still snow-capped. Yesterday I walked with my friends Maryse and Claude, all of us harvesting some thyme to dry and cook with during the coming year.

Today I celebrated Earth Day with a nice walk in the garrigue, the scrubby foothills just uphill from my house. There are a few photographs of Mother Nature’s handiwork, along with thoughts about this planet we call home.

The Chemin in bloom

Le Chemin fleuri

It’s all about the flowers
In May, my friend Claude and I completed the second half of one section of the Chemin de Compostelle, or Camino de Santiago. The full section starts in Le-Puy-en-Velay and finishes in Conques. You can read about it here. For last year’s two posts about the first half of this section, click here and here.

I always make photographs of flowers, and in May, the flowers were abundant. Because I had so many photos, I decided to do a second post that’s all botanical. I’m also going to try doing this one in both English and French.

May mixed bag

In the Butte aux Cailles neighborhood of Paris, a woman walks past “Fight 4 Your Rights,” by Paris street artist Kelu Abstract. It’s one of many installations opposing the Russian aggression in Ukraine.

The merry month of May
For this post, I have a real mix of things to share with you: some travels within France, the French election, the wonders of nature… and a national championship. First up are a few things I saw on a spring visit to Paris.

Spring wrap-up

Going to the birds

I never paid much attention to birds until we moved to the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. There, living in a smaller town surrounded by nature, I fell in love with the amazing breadth of avian life, and a pair of binoculars had a permanent home in the kitchen window. When I sold the house, I wrote up several pages of notes about it for the new owners; at least half was about the birds.

Moving to another country on another continent has plenty of challenges, and it took me a while to realize the effect of not knowing the local birds. I’ve struggled to put this feeling into words. Suffice it to say that I’ve been walking around here for nearly four years with a vague sense of unease, of not fully belonging, in part because I don’t know who the birds are.

Pedometer for a year

Much has been written about seeing 2020 fully in the rearview mirror, and I don’t have much new to add, which has left me pondering just what to do with this January blog post.

As the year was lurching to a close, I spent close to six weeks not being able to walk much, and since walking is my primary exercise, I was eager to get my feet back onto the trail. That happened a few weeks ago, and I’ve been racking up the kilometers as much as time and weather permit. On one such walk, it occurred to me that I could tell a story of 2020 through some of my walks of the past year.

Song of summer

Garden Toad — A toad the size of my hand surprised me one morning when I was watering my garden.

Heard from my terrace
You know that old story about how city people can’t fall asleep in the countryside because it’s too quiet? Well, that doesn’t hold water here in the South of France. It is not quiet; all manner of things are making noise. I’m here today to talk about two of the noisemakers: cicadas and frogs.

The cicadas awaken when the sun pops over the hills and begins to warm the earth. All day long, every day through the summer, the cicadas sing their amazing song. That music can get quite loud, up to 120 decibels, enough to damage human ears at close range. The cicada—cigale in French—is among the longest-lived insects, and it is recognized as a symbol of longevity and metamorphosis.

Continue reading “Song of summer”