I've only been waiting since the beginning of December for the flowers to open! Originally there were six buds but three withered and died, one by one, leaving just three flowers. The stem is so long, it's towering over all my other orchids.
I have three Phalaenopsis in flower now too, which includes a new one that K gave me for Valentine's Day. It's so nice to have plants flowering indoors in winter when there is very little happening in the garden.
Remember my Mother In Law's Tongue that flowered twice last year? I noticed another flower stem on it! That's three times in less than one year. I'll try again to photograph the flowers this time when they open up.
I also cut off the keiki (baby) from my Dendrobium and potted it up. However i basically had to pot it upside down as the roots were sticking upwards when it was attached to the main plant. I had to cut some shoots off in order to get it into the pot and at least four leaves went brown and fell off and I thought it was going to die. But the remaining leaves are fine now and there is a new shoot coming up, so I think it will be OK.
I'm obviously doing something right with my houseplants, bar the Spider Plants. They really don't like it here and just dry out too quickly, and even if I try to water them more often, they are still unhappy and have lots of brown leaves. I always thought Spider Plants were foolproof? It must be the heating which is via warm air coming out of ceiling vents.
My oldest Phalaenopsis which has flowered many times since I got it.
There are also dozens of Early Spider Orchids flowering in the lawn again! I'll take photos later when the grass has dried out. We've had another week of awful high wind and rain. I'm way behind with the garden tidying up after winter. Annoyingly it looks like I have lost all my Bidens in pots, I think because we had a number of very cold days where the temps hovered around freezing all day, which is unusual for here. Never mind, I'll just get some new plants to fill in the gaps in my large pots. They served me well for several years. 😀
St Veran sits at an altitude of 2,042m which is the highest year round inhabited village in France, and third highest in western Europe. It's a village full of alpine style houses dating from the C17th and C18th. Once these mountain villages relied on agriculture to survive whereas now summer tourism and winter sports are also ways to make a living.
The diagram shows how the majority of houses were built. They had a stone ground floor, then wooden floors above made from whole tree trunks. A smaller stone building was attached to the main building called a 'caset'. In this were a kitchen and store rooms. The families lived in the main, largest room with the animals for warmth and the upper wooden floors called 'fustes', which allowed air to circulate, were where they dried and stored fodder for their animals for the long winter. The houses were built mainly of larch and had large larch shingles or flat stone shingles for their roofs. They face south west to take advantage of the sun.
A Rowan tree below showing its lovely orange berries.
The village is long and built mainly around one street and was historically divided into 5 hamlets. This was to do with fighting fires in the wooden buildings and hence where the water fountains were located.
There are five of these fountains/troughs in the village and the water comes from mountain springs. The round bit was for the animals to drink from and the lower rectangular part for washing clothes.
There was a large photo showing the village at the beginning of the C20th, but the buildings haven't changed a lot on the outside, although they have of course been adapted for C20th and C21st century living. That's an Crag Martin flying in the picture.
The scenery around was amazing. We could feel the cool air up here and by the state of the geraniums in planters there had been a recent frost. We had lunch sitting out on the terrace above the village here and it was really a stunning place to sit and eat. The food was extremely filling too, I had a beef stew with gnocchi which was an odd mix and I could only get through about half of it!
Here we can see a number of different roofing styles, and another fountain.
A building that is different from the rest!
We then came down from the village to the valley below and had a walk along beside the stream.
Autumn Crocus (Colchicum autumnale). I've seen them growing in the mountain areas at this time of year both in the Pyrenees and the Southern Alps, but they are widespread throughout much of Europe. There were hundreds of them in the grassy area above.
L'Aigue-Blanche stream, looking in the direction of Italy which was close by.
Looking back in the other direction.
The map shows our journey from Guillestre to St Veran.
After Sisteron we headed to the town of Guillestre in the Queyras Natural Regional Park where we based ourselves for a few nights. From there we headed to the highest all year round inhabited village in France, St Veran. Obviously there are ski villages which are higher but people don't live there all the time. We drove along beside the river Guil and stopped at this place which looked scenic to take a few photos.
Growing in the gravel above the river I found some wildflowers! They are also species I've never seen before either which was nice. Finding wildflowers in September is quite rare due to the dryness in most places so that was quite surprising, as they were not low down right beside the river so couldn't have drawn moisture from it where they were situated.
This is Alpine Willowherb (Chamaenerion fleischeri).
Grass-leaved Scabious (Lomelosia graminifolia).
I'm pretty sure this is the Heineken Hoverfly (Rhingia campestris), which I haven't seen since we left Brittany.
I saw these flies - Bumblebee Hoverfly (Volucella bombylans) on the right and Fat-palped Tachina (Tachina ferox) on the left - on this Scabious when we arrived at St Veran, but I thought I would include the image in this post as it's about flowers and insects. As usual all these images can be clicked on to view larger which brings up the images more sharply.
Our next destination, Sisteron, has a large citadel perched on a rock overlooking the town.
This photo below is from the main town looking across the river Durance to the Rocher de la Baume.
And this is the side with the town and citadel, which you can see parts of way above us. We were prepared for this climb, however, it was rather windy. By rather windy I mean bloody awful freezing cold wind, and I had umpteen layers on including scarf and gloves. We managed about 10 steps up the path to the citadel before deciding it would only get worse the higher we went, so decided to give the citadel a miss and headed into the town instead!
Thankfully the buildings protected us from the worst of the wind so we could have a nice stroll around the town, which was really rather lovely.
I thought this shop was gorgeous - how beautifully decorated is that?! It's only touristy stuff inside but if you want to entice the tourists, this is the way to do it! (Though we didn't actually go inside 😀 because we have seen umpteen tourist shops and they generally have the same kind of thing on sale).
What I really started to notice was how beautifully decorated the town was florally. 4,700 of France's towns and villages are labelled as 'Ville Fleuri' or 'Village Fleuri' with either one to four stars (or rather, flowers) on a sign at the entrance to each town. Sisteron only has three flowers but I would have given it a five!
The church of Notre-Dame-des Pommiers, built between 1160 to 1220. Pommiers means apple trees, so I think Our Lady of the Apple Trees is a lovely name for a church (unless it is named after someone or a saint called that, which is not so romantic 😀).
Below was the best view we saw of the citadel. It would have been a tough climb up there anyway! It's something to do another time.
On our way further north that afternoon we passed this lovely lake, the Lac de Serre-Ponçon.
Our destination was the Queyras Regional Natural Park and the town of Guillestre. The map shows from Buis les Baronnies to Sisteron and onwards. The black line is the border with Italy.
We crossed over via this medieval bridge from the C14th or C15th and took a path on the other side from the road.
I did see the occasional butterfly but I'm not sure what this is - possibly an Adonis Blue due to the black marks along the white edge. Could be a Common Blue though!
At first we walked along at the river level. The water was so lovely and clear and there were the occasional people sunbathing and even wallowing in the water where there was a deeper pool. Bet the water was cold and as you can see from my fleece, whilst the air wasn't actually cold, I certainly wouldn't have been sunbathing!
Our path then went higher up and was a bit dodgy in places as it was quite narrow and there was a rather long drop down! Even though I'm mostly OK with heights now, it did worry me a bit, mostly because my balance is not good due to the neuropathy in my feet, and I have fallen a few times so I have to be very careful.
I had a fall due to skidding on an acorn once in Spain!! I felt like one of those cartoon characters that continues to run once out over the cliff edge then arms and legs are whirring around in mid air - that was me until I thought, all in this second that seemed to last for ages, I will fall towards this stone wall on my right to stop myself landing completely on the floor. I got grazed and a bit bruised but was OK. Poor K got shouted at though for not catching me!
The first hints of autumn colour.
We then came down to river level again and crossed over it via a footpath bridge, and went back up to the road.
Looking back to the medieval bridge again.
On the way back to where we had parked we walked along beside the road.
It was a really lovely walk with little signs of autumn appearing here and there, although the real colours won't appear until October/November.
