Rural France in Spring

France in spring is astonishingly, vibrantly, dazzling green. The bright green of wheat alternates with darker green of barley, the pale green of rapeseed, the varied greens of the patches of woodland which break up the cultivated fields. The only break from green is where ploughed fields have been sown with potatoes or corn seedlings. Everything is so lush, unsurprising as it rains most days. So far it has been Camelot rain - only after sundown or when we are driving or undercover somewhere - and the rainjackets have only come out once, and not for long. We have had 3 warm to hot days, 3 cool to cold days, and today was the first day of another warm spell: temperature rising to 28 degrees later this week. It is so fertile that you can almost see the grain crops growing. In the week since our arrival wheat fields have taken on a golden tinge, and the rapeseed fields have more and more yellow flecks each day. It is such a contrast to dry old Australia. We are enjoying being somewhere where we can have guilt-free long showers. Somehow the French have managed to add more housing in this part of the country without detracting from the countryside. They achieve this by having small clusters of new houses, whose size and shape copies the traditional farmhouses in the area, built on the edge of a village or at a spot on a backroad where there is already one house. You have to look hard to see whether they are new or old. No big estates, no Macmansions, very little of the highly productive farmland put under asphalt. Villages are grey, with patches of blue and yellow irises. They are small, and don't seem to have a high street with shops. Our nearest village has only a boulanger and a single restaurant. The grey rendering is the same in the bigger towns and cities, but there are more shops, parks, flower gardens providing colour.