One Hundred But Only Eleven?!

Yes, eleven photos for my 100th blog post!  That means we have been very quiet, subdued, lazy this week.  The weather has not been so bad – it has rained more days than not but only small amounts and not the downpours we get in Auckland at times.  No excuse there.  It has not been very cold either but it was cold enough for us to have the fire going three times so far and the cats are spending more time indoors pushing their way onto laps when they can!  There was a light frost one morning.

We have both spent a lot of time just sitting reading and chilling out.  We went back to Poitiers for another wander and confirmed that it is a charming place.  That is another reason for the shortage of photos – I have already posted lots of Poitiers so my selection was restricted this time.

Some of the fields we saw being harvested last week were transformed from one day to the next into pristine acres of tilled earth.  We didn’t even see the tractors on them, it was just done.

In between the showers we did manage to do a little gardening and to cut the ever rampant lawns again.  That’s actually about all I have to report so enjoy the few photos and I’ll try to do better next week.  In fact I have been studying up on some photography stuff and hope to get out and do some experiments soon. Not sure it will result in anything publishable but you never know.

The famous field from last week. This shot was on Tuesday from a similar location. After a sprint start it doesn’t seem to have grown much more with the extra days.

I am not very familiar with this equipment but it looks like it ploughs five furrows at once and can do so in either direction.

In the hamlet of Le Marchais. Anyone interested in this building for sale? Probably cheap!

We have seen in a number of French cities that amongst the nicest old commercial buildings are those built by Caisse d’Epargne. Poitiers was no exception.

Hôtel de Ville in Poitiers (again). I was having a ’50mm prime lens day’ and used a CPL (circular polariser). Very little post-processing, this is practically how it came out of the camera. Settings were ISO 320, f/8, 1/250sec.

A streetscape in the pedestrian precinct of Poitiers showing lots of the ‘half timbered’ style of building that are common around here.

Lots of delicious treats in a cake shop window.

1st November is All Saints Day and a significant public holiday on the French calendar. Being in Poitiers on 31st October meant that we saw the floral preparations at their very best, like this display of chrysanthemums in a fountain. Interestingly, you would never give a person chrysanthemums as a gift in France – they are associated with death and commemoration of the dead. To give them to your mother-in-law on Mother’s Day, as we would in Australasia, would be a grave error (gotcha!).

Back in the garden this large slug was enjoying a wild mushroom.

More bugs, this time Graphosoma Italica, body length 10-12mm. These were on a roadside plant near where I had taken the photos of the field and tractor. Unfortunately I still had the 50mm prime lens on so this is cropped as far as possible without destroying the quality but it is still a bit small really.

Firebug (Pyrrhocori apterus); not a very nice backdrop unfortunately. They were clustered under a dead leaf on the water tank but the leaf fell off when I tried to move things for a clearer shot.