Sunday Stills - Potluck

I've been missing from Sunday Stills for the past couple of weeks - life got ahead of me! This week, the theme is Potluck - whatever we want, so when we took a walk to see the floodwaters of the Calavon river, I took a few shots which I will share here.

First of all, here's one I took for "The Number Seven" a couple of weeks (eek actually four!) ago and didn't get around to posting.  I was quite pleased with this...

...I just didn't have TIME to blog! (Get it? Get it??)

We've had three days of heavy rain since I came back from Ireland on Tuesday and the rivers and streams are all running at full spate.  We walked to Le Saute du Moin to see the waterfall and sure enough it was a lot fuller than it was on our last visit (and a lot less frozen)

This is one of the tributaries that flow into the pool which feeds the waterfall.  This was running pretty fast too, and I had to keep a close eye on Cinnamon to make sure she didn't decide to go swimming.

A much more peaceful point of view :

And finally, this is a ford across the Calavon at the North end of the Gorge d'Oppedette.  Normally, there is just a trickle of water here and you can walk across it in ordinary shoes.  Not today.

Sunday Stills - Circles

This weeks challenge for Sunday Stills is Circles.  Pretty mean during a week when there is no full moon...

Anyway first of all I thought I'd go all arty-farty with a round table and a round lamp and two glasses and some coins.  I had a lot of fun, but I don't think I Aced it.

Then I put supper on the table - baked camembert, two glasses of white wine - and I went "Oh look, circles!"

So here's my second attempt.

NB No LSH's were fed cold food in the making of this photograph.

Visit Sunday Stills for more circles.

Sunday Stills - Fabrics

The challenge for this week is fabrics.  I was initially tempted to head off to Apt market and get some shots of some of the cloth dealers.  Then my husband's shirts hanging in the wardrobe caught my eye...
Casting my eye around the room, it wasn't long before I got more inspiration, so here it is : Fabrics, without leaving the bedroom.

shirts

lace detail on a dress

linen blinds

broderie anglaise on the quilt cover

Thanks for looking.  Visit Sunday Stills for more Fabrics.

Sunday Stills - The Letter F

I almost didn't take part in this challenge, as I hadn't set out to photograph something suitable.  Then I was looking through my shots from the week and I came across this one from last Monday.

It's Flurry, Filling the Frame!  But not only that, can you see the letter F to the right of his left eye?  It's caused by light shining into the field shelter (another F, clever me!!).  Well, I had to participate when I saw that!

Off to see everyone else's Fs.  Visit Sunday Stills for Fire Engines, Fruit Bowls and other F words...

Sunday Stills - The Old Barn

I think I had a clear advantage in this weeks challenge - Provençe is full of old barns!

This one is a two minute walk from my house.  Maybe it's not really a barn, but it's an agricultural building of some sort!

The biggest challenge here was getting a shot which didn't have a phone or electricity cable running through it.

See what I mean?

A little further down the road, we've got this :

but I have to confess that the stone building behind it with the gaping windows was calling to me.

I went all arty and B&W :

What do you think?

I came back and edited this post to include this beauty - I couldn't leave it out!  We passed this in the Isère region when we were doing our trek across France last year.

The epitome of an Old Barn, don't you think?

For more Old Barns, visit Sunday Stills and see what everyone else has captured.

Sunday Stills - Lone Tree

Just one shot to choose from this week, my camera battery has been misbehaving.

Here's a lone tree in the middle of a field with a white horse to keep it company :

Visit Sunday Stills for more "Lone Tree" photos.

Sunday Stills - Best of 2012

2012 was a busy year for me.  We moved to Provençe for three months at the start of the year and I then spent a month heading homewards on horseback across the French countryside.  Badly bitten by the Provençe bug, the LSH and I decided to move back at the start of 2013 for at least a year, but circumstances pushed us into bringing our plans forward and making that move at the end of September.

So there were two relocations, a life-affirming trek on horseback, a major milestone birthday, a forced de-cluttering of our lives in order to make our Irish home suitable for renting and a Christmas trip to California.  Oh yes, then there was the broken limb, far too much time in hospitals and the start of the family diaspora as one daughter emigrated to the UK and one was left behind in Cork... a Busy Year indeed!

Le Big Trek was very important to me, and the first eight photos here were taken on the hoof, so to speak.  Many of my Big Trek photos feature Flurry's ears, but he's only in two of these!

A medieval road that we followed for a short while

My trekking partners Anne and Gigi, crossing a field of young lavender

An awe-inspiring Provençal sky

Looking back the way we had come.  We started the day on the far side of the most distant mountain,
passed by the flat-topped mountain in the middle of the picture, crossed another mountain...

...descended onto the undulating "dragon's back" ridge you can see here and rode all the way along the top of it,
with the mountains of the Drôme stretching away before us.  This was my favourite day of the trek.

This is my favourite "Through the Ears" shot, taken as we descended from the shoulder 
of the Dentelles de Montmirail towards Beaumes de Venise.

This beautiful reflective scene was an étang, a pond or small reservoir, in the Morvan region

This woodland waterfall was also in the Morvan

We came back to Provençe in the summer, mostly to find a rental property but also to see the lavender fields in bloom.

Lavender field on top of the Luberon mountain

Lavender field near Viens.  The little chapel in the distance is owned by Picasso's widow

Sunflowers!

Colourful Apt market

Horses are a big part of my life.  I went to two big horse shows this year, the Salon de Cheval at Avignon and the Royal Dublin Show.  Mostly I was just playing with my camera, but I got a couple of shots I was proud of.

This was a "Wow! Look at that!" point and shoot stroke of luck.  This is SOC, not even cropped.

I love the harmony in this one

This was another "point and shoot," not quite so good but I like the movement in it

A certain small brown dog features in my blog from time to time and the Best of 2012 would not be complete without her.  She's very photogenic!

Cinnamon hiding behind wild lavender...

...blending in with the Ochre at Colorado Provençal...

...and just generally looking cute.

Finally, random shots I like...

Mad Hare sculpture, taken on a road trip with my best friend
(we were bringing a jeep-ful of stuff over to my newly emigrated daughter)

This photo was done especially for Sunday Stills

This one was inspired by a fellow Sunday Stills contributor

I know this is not technically great, but I like it!

Autumn colour

Autumn Sky

The first snow

Joining the Sunday Stills "gang" has made me push myself to learn a bit more about how my camera works and to look for inspiration in new ways.  Visit Sunday Stills for more "Best of 2012" photos.

I'd also like to wish all my readers a Happy New Year - thanks for following along on my travels.

Here's to 2013...

Sunday Stills - Pets

Cookie is the ultimate hunter.  She spends her day gazing out the window, watching the chickens, cats and pigeons and trying to figure out how to catch them.  On walks, she is constantly on the alert for prey.  We daren't allow her off-leash - her recall is non-existent and her hunting drive is so strong that once she gets a scent, the killer instinct takes over her brain, leaving no room for trivia such as family members calling her or trying to distract her with treats.

She does have some down-time though.  Preferably on the couch beside me, or even on my knee occasionally.

She even likes to "help" while I do this Blogging stuff.

I'm currently feeling very, very guilty about her.  By the time this is posted, I will be in a plane somewhere over the Atlantic, and poor Cookie will be sitting in kennels, wondering why we have deserted her.  She will be in kennels for a little over two weeks.  Since we took her in as a stray eighteen months ago, she has never been with anyone other than family for more than a couple of days.

Because she can't be trusted with cats or children and because of her overly strong hunting drive, we couldn't find anyone to look after her while we are away.  Cinnamon is a different story, she is very personable and low maintenance, but Cookie, despite being very devoted and loving, is a risk.  She's safest in kennels.

Sorry, Cookie, it's for your own good.

Visit Sunday Stills for more pets photos - it's their fourth anniversary, too!

Sunday Stills - Textures

I am fascinated by trees.  Their shape, how they become distorted by their environment, their foliage throughout the seasons - not just deciduous trees, but also the evergreens, when they pop out their oh-so-green new foliage in the spring!  The first thing to come into my head when I saw the "Textures" theme was trees - bark, to be specific.

No, I thought, I'll think of something else, and I took a few shots of other things, like my horses' thick winter coats crusted with snow, the feathery tops of some reeds growing in a river and mini-snow drifts which had been sculpted by the wind, but I wasn't happy with any of them and in the end, I came back to trees.

Papery bark on a Plane Tree

Rough Bark on an Oak Tree

Smooth Bark - I think it's a cherry tree, I'll tell you next summer!

Dead Pine tree with stripped bark

A Knot

Dead Wood in the Snow

The Bark on the Planks which make up my horses' Field Shelter!