Le Pouget
It’s the name of our hamlet of three houses or the “lieu-dit” in French. Le Pouget doesn’t mean anything, so it must be a family name. No one seems to know. It’s also our address: Le Pouget, St Avit-Sénieur, France. That’s it. No street or house number. We…
Then came Patrick
We continued on the house and worked long, hard days, often leaving after sunset, too tired to do anything but find an open restaurant, dinner and a bottle of wine. Friends visited to check our progress and stayed to help, pitching in with the day’s project, however dirty…
A cow in labor and one solitary bee
We demolished every wall in the house except a stone wall that had been the end of the original house before an addition in the 1800s. Our contractor’s assistant discovered it when he was removing loose plaster. The wall emerged in three days of grueling work, Joe’s jackhammer…
A Courbet fox
John and I are amazed at how much wildlife we see in France, more than anywhere in the US. It’s hard to imagine where the animals live, the entire countryside is cultivated and most of the woods are planted – sycamores in straight, evenly spaced rows, no undergrowth.…
The Neighborhood
The man that sold us our house warned us not to trust the neighbor. The neighbor said don’t trust the farmer. The farmer kept his own counsel. We set out to find out by ourselves. There are five families in the neighborhood. We met Bertrand and Mathilda first,…