Family Matters It's August 20, & we've one more week left in our French Summer. After 11+ weeks of hot, dry weather with blue skies, I'm sitting on the terrace at 4:00 in the afternoon, sipping a cup of HOT tea with a sweater on. Is this some signal from above that it's time to leave? The lavender is cut back, the figs are ripe, the lawn is brown, & my plumbago needs a haircut (& so do I!). That's another hint…it's almost over. But what a sum...

About 3-4 years ago, Les & I did Ancestry's spit test. A bit surprised with the results, we realized that the percentages of our "parentage" didn't seem to make sense. How could I be much more Irish than English, when both sides of my family came from the Midlands (Derbyshire & Yorkshire) in England? How could Les NOT be ¼ each German, Italian, Finnish & maybe Jewish, since he had grandparents or great-grandparents that came from those countries? An...

How many times have you wanted to just stop the clock? The older we get, the quicker time seems to fly! Les & I have been here 4 weeks already--1/3 of our summer has just slipped away. We've enjoyed every minute of it, & feel good about what we've accomplished. Our little kitchen project is done, & we love it. Les' new home gym, located in our "little garage", is installed, & working well. And, as usual, we found some interesting weekend events t...

Les & I are happy to say that we are once again "bien installés" in our French house, & enjoying life here, as usual, in southern France. I chose the picture for this album deliberately: it shows Les modeling a sculpture we saw at a museum we visited in Marseille on Saturday, June 8.It goes so well with our 2019 summer theme: Creativity DEMANDS Purging. To get creative, it may help to kick out the old stuff that's been bugging you. We came this year ...

Have you done the DNA spit test? If you have, did the results surprise you? Les & I have 2 different family backgrounds. We assumed he was predominantly German, & I was all English. WRONG! We even took our kids, when they were 13 & 16 on a "Roots Trip", doing a week in England (saw cousins there), a week in Germany (went town to town looking for a town named "Detterbeck" or something like it, & ate a lot of brats), & France (because we all w...