Sunday 28 June 2009

Market shopping and butterfly spotting / Le marché et les papillons

Saturday is market day in Pézenas. It’s always fun but it’s especially colourful and busy in the summer. / Samedi est le jour du marché à Pézenas. On s’y régale toujours mais surtout en été.

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We bought almond croissants for our breakfast and took them to the Café des Arts to eat with our coffee. Sorry, I forgot to photograph them! / Nous avons acheté des croissants d’amande et nous les avons apporté au Café des Arts pour les manger avec du café. Je m’excuse – j’ai oublié de les photographer!

Stalls line the long main street – clothes, sea food, charcuterie, olives, household goods ….

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A fruit and vegetable stall in Occitan colours
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Lots of cheese
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and colourful terracotta pots to cook it all in.
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Des tagines et des casseroles en terrecuite.

At home the garden was full of butterflies. There seem to be a lot of the this year. / Le jardin était plein de papillons. Il me semble qu’il y en a beaucoup cette année.

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DSC06851 The butterflies love the lavender flowers. I haven’t identified these yet, except the Marbled white (top right).
Les papillons aiment les fleurs de lavande. Je n’ai pas les identifié encore sauf le Blanc Marbré (en haut, a gauche).
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Pairs of swallowtails were chasing each other around, too. I posted photos of these the other day.

First tomatoes! / Les premières tomates!

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We ate the first ripe Yellow Pear tomatoes. They’re small – a variety of cherry tomato.

On a mangé les premières tomates mures Yellow Pear. Elles sont petites – c’est une varieté de tomate cerise.

8 comments:

our friend Ben said...

We love our 'Yellow Pear' tomatoes too, but our first this year have been the marvelous 'Sungold', and we gave the very first ripe 'Sungold' (a cherry tomato) to our puppy Shiloh! Looking forward to enjoying many more, as well as 'Yellow Pear', ourselves.

HappyMouffetard said...

What beautiful butterflies. We've had very few so far this summer (apart from cabbage white).

I hope the tomatoes were as gorgeous to eat as they are to look at.

easygardener said...

The market looks fascinating. Your first tomatoes - what a treat. I wish mine would hurry up and ripen!

Stefaneener said...

Those tagines make my mouth water just looking at them! But then I have a real thing for kitchenware.

I've noticed about four different kinds of butterflies lately too. Hopefully it's a good sign. Your tomatoes are lovely.

Jan said...

It's lovely to see the rest of your market photos, it's obviously a much larger and grander affair than the market in our village! Your tomatoes are ahead of ours, although I did find a few yesterday that were about 1 inch dia, so hopefully not too long!

syrahsuzie said...

I've really noticed the "pili pala" (butterflies) this year too. Must be good news.

We seem to be a couple of weeks behind you with the vegetables, although usually they have the first tomatoes here on the 1st July. We are not going to make that this year.

chaiselongue said...

Our friend Ben: I'll look out for Sungold next year. Yellow pear are nice, too.

Happy Mouffetard: we have Cabbage whites, too, but luckily a lot of others too.

Thanks to all for your comments - especially good to see the Welsh name for butterflies (pili pala), syrahsuzie!

lianne said...

wow i like the tajine's on your image time before a holiday i think...