Christmas in Castelnau-Magnoac

The Hotel Dupont in Castelnau-Magnoac is a renowned landmark for the village. The hotel has a great restaurant that serves some great food, it even has a vintage concert size organ that is ocassionally played for the guests. The links to the restaurant and to the village/town are in French, but if you use the google translator you will get the information.

For the special Christmas market they had a horse drawn sleigh with Pere Noel and Mere Noel. Actually it is wagon built to look like a sleigh, but the children came from miles around to enjoy a short ride and tell Pere Noel what they wanted for Christmas.

Although this was the weekly Saturday market for Castelnau-Magnoac , inside the salle de fete (village festival hall) was a Marche de Noel (Christmas Market) where one could buy local food specialties, wines and brandies as well as objects d'art from local craftsmen.




For this event they set up a short route for the horse and sleigh to go around the village. The big challenge for the horse drawn sleigh is to weave through the congested parking lot and narrow streets of hazardly parked cars and darting traffic.

Last Thursdays visit to Montbrun Bocage

The church in Montbrun Bocage

A view of rue des moines

View of the chateau from the village

Another view of the chateau

Montbrun Bocage

This website is in French, using the google translator will enable you to find out more about this charming French Village.

More Garden Photos

The front door after the tulips have finished.

The back garden. I am trying to establish the garden so that it will have interest at all times of the year. As you can see here I have used a variety of plant colors and also a variety of different textures in establishing this part of the garden. The tulips that you see in the back of the photo were at the end of their blooming period.

In all of the years that I have been gardening, this is the first time that there has ever been grass involved. I am of the opinion that grass is for cows to eat, and does not belong in gardens. When we started our gite, we decided that we needed a place for the guest to be able to sit in the shade and have a place to read. I use a push mower to mow it about once a week. Keeping all of the invasive grasses and weeds out of it takes more time than the mowing does.

This is creeping thyme that I planted as a ground cover. This has been there for five years now, and provides great color early in the season.

Spring Flowers in the Front Garden

As usual last fall I did not get the all the tulips that I purchased in the ground. This is very normal for me, I always buy more than I have places to plant them. After January 1, I ended up puting them in pots. I did not have any idea that the results would be like this.

After doing so well with them this year, I plan on repeating it next year, for one thing you can place the pots in the shade, as these are after they have opened. I am going to experiment with leaving some of them in the pots for the entire year, just to see what the results will be.

This Japanese peony is said to be over a hundred years old. Not sure how anyone knows for sure, but this was what we were told by the previous owners.

We planted the olive tree this year to take the place of an Italian cypress that did not look very good.

Last Sunday's drive

It was a clear day and I decided to drive towards the Pyrenees to try to get some good photos of the snow. This is less than twenty minutes from the house where I decided to stop and take some photos.

The highest mountain in the photo is the Pic du Midi. On any clear day it always shows up on the horizon. These photos were taken on the border of the Haute Garonne and the Haute Pyrenees departments.

This photo is taken towards the southeast. St Gaudens would be in this direction from where the photo was taken.

This is one of the many houses that we saw when we were out that have been left to the elements and within another twenty years will no longer be here. I have know people who have purchased houses in this condition and fixed them up and had wonderful homes. The thing is, this place has the views that are in the photos above.