Spring, finally, in many senses

(All photos courtesy of Thierry Jouanneteau)

After wailing and moaning about our awful spring weather, both on this blog and any other available online platforms, I am happy to announce to you that spring appears to have finally arrived in Aveyron. So I'm done complaining now. Thanks for listening.

Of course, it's officially been spring here, like everywhere else in the Northern Hemisphere, for...so long it's depressing, so let's not go back there. But in a meteorological sense, this is the week when I stopped wearing a coat to work, when we started to sleep with the windows open, and when the yard became a nice place to spend time, rather than a pit of weed-infested despair.

I've noticed, however, that in a botanical sense, spring always seems to come late to our village and somehow even later to our house. Lilacs and iris have been blooming like crazy all over our neighbors' yards, but ours have just come out.

And trees definitely take their time around here too. The photo below was taken in our village last year on May 1st, and you can see that the leaves are not quite out on a lot of the trees. As I write, some of the trees in our yard are just filling out, too.

In a psychological sense, I think perhaps I don't get my spring burst of energy until the days start to get significantly longer. It isn't getting dark now until past 9:00pm, and suddenly I need less sleep and am able to stay up later. That in itself makes life cheerier.

And in a professional sense, I am finished with grading papers and my classload is quite a bit lighter.

Finally, in a family sense, it's only two months now until I see her, but I do have to help get her through the strenuous Baccalaureate exam. But that will have to be a subject for another post. Let's keep this one upbeat! Especially since things have clouded over since I started writing it...

Retour de saison

After an unseasonably warm and dry February, winter made a comeback last week.

My daughters found themselves sprinkled with snow as they went back to school after the two-week winter holiday; my colleagues and I all bundled up at work as suddenly the heating system didn't quite keep us warm enough.


I've experienced this retour de saison many times in March. Just two years ago, it was also snowing during the first week of the month. And last year we fretted about making it up to Clermont-Ferrand to see Michel Polnareff in concert because it was snowing all over the area on March 19th.

I also remember one year when we had a huge snowfall on Easter Monday -- about a foot here in the Rodez area and at least three feet on the Aubrac mountains.

Winter lingers in Aveyron.

(Photos courtesy of Thierry Jouanneteau)