Tales of frost and sunshine in Segur

 

It’s the dead of winter in Segur le Chateau. The leaves, long departed from the trees, now carpet the frozen ground. Most mornings one can find them decorated in fragile crystals of ice. The last few days here have been well below freezing, but the air is still. The day lit sky is bright blue, while the night sky is a sea of stars.

Pia, a friend and colleague, has been visiting. We’re working together on some writing projects, and have been spending our days between brainstorming (while nursing the logburner), and exploring the woodland trails around the village. For inspiration, procrastination, and to ensure we appreciate the warmth that the little logburner is pumping out.

Showing new friends and old friends around Segur, and witnessing their response, is one of my favourite idle pleasures. Rambling Segur has a certain impact on our guests. Some are immediately captured by the medieval feel, and rustic charms, others wonder aloud how on earth we found this place.

Despite the still cold encasing Segur, on our walks we encountered deer, buzzards, wren, and finches, all happily wintering in the Correze. So I thought I’d share with you some of the scenes of winter. I seem to have developed a certain infatuation with frost, photographing frost covered – ivy, leaves, logs and bridges. There’s something about sunlight, radiating the icicles, that captures my imagination, forces me to stop in my tracks, stair at my feet, and put my camera to work.

I hope you like the pictures!  

A Sunday forage and competitive bake off

Chris (my husband) and I spent the weekend with friends, and their four kids, at their place in the country. It was a perfect weekend, collecting fallen fruits from the damson, Victoria plum, and apple trees in the backyard.


We then headed out on country amble and an afternoon forage. We collected blackberries, sloes, elderberries and hawthorn berries from the hedgerows. Being before the first frost, it’s strictly a little early to pick sloes. However given my enthusiasm for making sloe gin, and the potential to use a freezer to act as the all important frost, we picked them anyway.

 
Dragging our haul of foraged goods back to Randolph and Lalu’s house, we quickly agreed to a “crumble off,” with Randolph and I as the two competitors and everyone else as judges. Randolph pleased the crowds with his mother’s crumble recipe, complete with rich and buttery crumble, and blackberries and apples infused with cinnamon. I managed to surprise the judges with my flippant inclusion of elderberries, together with the blackberries, apples, and plums.

The judges awarded first prize to Randolph, which was fair, because the crumble was superior, but sad for me, as it was my first experience of competitive baking!