Fête de la Musique

 Throughout France the summer solstice is celebrated with music. Every year 21 June is la Fête de la Musique and every town stages a live free concert for the community. This year in Preuilly the weather was unreliable and the music was outdoors, so very few people turned up. It was sad for Les Débranchés ('The Unplugged / Disconnected'), the very good jazz / blues trio who performed.

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 Orchard News: Clafoutis production has begun, as of yesterday, with 500g of sour cherries going into 6 individual puddings. 1.5 kg sweet red cherries and 500 g sweet yellow cherries were turned into compote (stewed, in other words) last night. The birds got a lot of the yellow cherries, as I misjudged their ripening speed. The red cherries came from Tim and Gaynor's. 500 g strawberries made into icecream.

It must be summer now, as I saw a large cicada sitting on the red currant bushes at Tim and Gaynor's while I was over there yesterday picking cherries. In our orchard we have one more sweet cherry to pick, which I think will be ripe in a couple of days, and four sour cherries which are just starting to have some ripe fruit. The nectarines are coming along nicely and it looks like I should get a good crop of the small white ones from the old tree by the potager gate.